Health Policy Report Research Articles

Health Policy Report. Federal policies and the poor.

The federal government's open-ended commitment to finance medical care for the nation's elderly population and eligible poor people has been reduced by wholesale reductions in spending that were incorporated in the $98.3-billion tax-increase bill President Reagan signed into law on September 3. These changes in health policy reflect three important trends: the government's preference for cutting spending by reducing payments for care rather than paring benefits, a stronger congressional commitment to health programs targeted for the poor than administration policies would afford, and overall, a demonstration that health care as a political issue has lost some of its allure as . . .

Health Policy Report. Medicare's uncertain future.

The United States has begun a painful reassessment of the alignment of social responsibilities among levels of government and between the public and private sectors. As this struggle unfolds, pressures on the government are intensifying to check the steady increase in the portion of the federal budget that serves the elderly, including the funds that finance Medicare. This exercise will be given to many fits and starts, particularly during election years, but it will very probably have important short-term and long-range consequences for Medicare.This fledgling movement, which stems from President Reagan's goal to retrench the scope of government and . . .

Health policy report. Prospects for the National Institutes of Health.

The Reagan administration has recently been sounding a lot of positive notes about the National Institutes of Health. The most politically audible note was the President's commitment, articulated as the only health-related item in the State of the Union address, to increase biomedical-research funding by $100 million. But in reality, the administration's policy, as reflected in its budget for fiscal 1983, falls short of maintaining the NIH's purchasing power and in effect erodes the strategy of stabilized funding developed under Jimmy Carter and embraced by Congress. The administration's support of biomedical research is a relative matter. Certainly, it comes far . . .