State Health Watch Archives – October 1, 2005

October 1, 2005

• Flu pandemic: Not if, but when — and will the U.S. be prepared?

  If a moderately severe strain of a pandemic flu virus hits the United States, more than 500,000 Americans could die and more than 2.3 million could be hospitalized, according to state-by-state figures from a model developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and used by Trust for America’s Health.

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• Fiscal Fitness: How States Cope - California group creates insurance products and expands access for low-income citizens

  Working with an initial grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Alameda County (CA) Health Care Services Agency has been working to improve coverage and access to care for a number of targeted populations.

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• Charging Medicaid patients more causes problems

  States looking to save money on Medicaid by adding or increasing premiums and implementing a copay structure may end up creating additional health and financial problems, according to results of an Oregon study.

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• Health coverage expansion varies in states

  Efforts to expand health coverage generally express the potential impact in national terms, ignoring that states differ greatly in demographic and economic circumstances and in health insurance markets and thus will experience different impacts from any expansion strategy.

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• Slow progress made in preventing medical errors

  Five years ago, the authors of the Institute of Medicine’s landmark report on medical errors said it would be “irresponsible to expect anything less than a 50% reduction in errors over five years.” But Harvard School of Public Health adjunct professor Lucian Leape, a co-author of the report, and Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, have looked at the situation five years later and concluded that, irresponsible or not, we haven’t seen anything approaching a 50% reduction in errors.

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