New on the Site
Initiative Helps Communities Address Seniors’ Health Needs
A Fund survey of 5,069 seniors served by NORC programs in New York City found that only 8 percent of seniors in one NORC had diabetes, while in two others, 42 percent of seniors did. A new article published in Cityscape, a journal of the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, discusses the work of the Fund’s Health Indicators in NORC Programs Initiative, which has enabled community-based programs with limited resources to become more systematic in addressing the management of clients with diabetes, heart disease, or an increased risk for falls, and is focusing efforts on the specific needs of the community.
New York's Uninsured: Fund Chartbook Offers Latest Data
An increase in the rate of public coverage has offset declines in employer-sponsored coverage, keeping the share of New Yorkers without insurance stable through 2008. That share is nineteen percent of non-elderly New York City residents, and 15 percent of non-elderly New York State residents, the bulk of them workers and their dependents and/or those with low income. These data are among the findings of Health Insurance Coverage in New York, 2008, the Fund's just-released annual chartbook, based on the most recent available data from the Current Population Survey. The chartbook presents a detailed look at the demographics of the uninsured, coverage among workers and the low-income, estimates of uninsured New Yorkers who are eligible for public coverage, and coverage trends over time.
Initiative Focuses on Safer Health Care Transitions
Twenty-five health care providers from the New York metropolitan area are working together in a new Fund initiative to achieve better coordination and communication between health care organizations and better integration of family caregivers in planning and implementing care plans. The initiative, called Transitions in Care–Quality Improvement Collaborative, or TC-QuIC, aims to tackle persistent health care challenges, such as avoidable hospital readmissions.
Cost Sharing: Lower Premiums, But at a Price
A new Fund report examines the impact of cost sharing—deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance—on group health insurance premiums in New York, and the resulting out-of-pocket costs for enrollees. Among the findings, while cost-sharing increases can offset health insurance premium hikes, they can erode the risk-spreading effect of group coverage and place greater burden on higher-need individuals.
New High-Risk Pool Requirement: First Reform Challenge for NY
Twenty years ago, state policymakers rejected special high-risk pools for consumers with health problems, and instead required health plans to accept all New Yorkers for coverage, regardless of their medical status. But at a well-attended roundtable discussion at the Fund on April 23, senior government leaders, health plan officials, and consumer advocates grappled with how best to set up such a high-risk mechanism, the first major implementation challenge of the new federal health care reform legislation.
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