Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

The Politics of Evidence Use in Health Policy Making in Germany--the Case of Regulating Hospital Minimum Volumes
This article examines the role of scientific evidence in informing health policy decisions in Germany, using minimum volumes policy as a case study. It argues that scientific evidence was used strategically at various stages of the policy process both by individual corporatist actors and by the Federal Joint Committee as the regulator. Minimum volumes regulation was inspired by scientific evidence suggesting a positive relationship between service volume and patient outcomes for complex surgical interventions. Federal legislation was introduced in 2002 to delegate the selection of services and the setting of volumes to cor...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - May 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Ettelt, S. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

The Politics and Policies of Regulating Generics in Latin America: A Survey of Seventeen States
This article contributes to current discussion on access to medicine in the aftermath of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The focus is on off-patent or "generic" medicines: their product definitions, quality standards and prescription procedures. Drawing from a survey conducted of seventeen countries across the Latin American region, this article examines the differences in definition of off-patent products and the paradox of their relatively lower consumption across multiple developing states. The findings point to pathways for improving standards, ...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - May 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Sweet, C. M. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

Fear by Association: Perceptions of Anti-Immigrant Policy and Health Outcomes
This article builds on the work of public health scholars who have found a link between this heightened policy environment and the mental health of immigrants, yet expands on this research by finding that the health consequences associated with immigration policy extend to Latinos broadly, not just immigrants. These findings are relevant to scholars of immigration and health policy as well as policy makers who should consider these negative effects on the immigrant community during their decision-making process. (Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law)
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - May 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Vargas, E. D., Sanchez, G. R., Juarez, M. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

Disease Campaigns and the Decline of Treatment Advocacy
This article asks why. Using original quantitative and qualitative data on the goals and political claims of over one thousand organizations from 1960 through 2014, I find that many early disease advocacy organizations prioritized health care access. But unfavorable political climates discouraged new organizations from focusing on access to treatment. When health care became particularly controversial, even organizations with health care-related missions refrained from pursuing this goal politically. Eventually, politically active organizations began to drop treatment provision from their missions. Over the decades, the tr...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - May 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Best, R. K. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

Editor's Note
(Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law)
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - May 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Grogan, C. M. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Editor ' s Note Source Type: research

Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America
(Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law)
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Kent-Stoll, P. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Books Source Type: research

Hoping to Help: The Promises and Pitfalls of Global Health Volunteering
(Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law)
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Clark, M. A. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Books Source Type: research

Mere Mortals: Overselling the Young Invincibles
This article traces the emergence of the term "young invincible" in health policy literature, the health insurance industry, and popular media. Young invincible is the label given to adults under thirty-five who opt not to purchase health insurance because they perceive that they will not need it and would rather spend their money elsewhere. As uninsurance rates climbed, policy makers tried to figure out who the uninsured were and why they lacked coverage. Young adults rightly assumed importance in these conversations because they were disproportionately represented among the uninsured and their numbers were growing. Howev...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Levine, D., Mulligan, J. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Behind the Jargon Source Type: research

Policy Diffusion across Disparate Disciplines: Private- and Public-Sector Dynamics Affecting State-Level Adoption of the ACA
The ACA entails a number of provisions that are profoundly changing the way the states ensure access to medical care, including the expansion of Medicaid and the maintenance of health insurance exchanges. Here, we argue that while federal policy is the originating force of whether these provisions are adopted, individual state decisions are made within a larger ecosystem. This ecosystem has two main components: (1) complementary and competing state and federal policies; and (2) medical provision by a variety of suppliers. Specifically, the merits, costs, and uncertainties associated with adopting these provisions cannot be...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Conti, R. M., Jones, D. K. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Commentaries Source Type: research

Policy Diffusion in Polarized Times: The Case of the Affordable Care Act
With increasing ideological polarization both within states and across states, policy makers face new challenges in developing and refining policies. This essay explores these challenges in the context of the spread of health policies across the states under the Affordable Care Act, highlighting key arguments and findings from the authors in this Special Issue. I discuss how common mechanisms of policy diffusion, the attributes of policies themselves, and the conditional nature of policy diffusion all play somewhat different roles during polarized times. In addition to new challenges to policy makers, polarization offers n...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Volden, C. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Commentaries Source Type: research

Framing, Engagement, and Policy Change: Lessons for the ACA
This article contends that engagement, an alternative rhetorical strategy where advocates address the same policy dimensions as their opponents, is a more promising approach. Extending the engagement literature to the elite context in which most ACA-related decisions are made, it argues that elite-level engagement necessitates the additional task of linking policy change to opponents' broader philosophical and policy goals. Current debates surrounding the application of sales taxes to electronic commerce—a policy arena that seems far removed from health care policy but overlaps with the ACA in ways that make it an ap...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Karch, A., Rosenthal, A. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

The Role of Public Opinion--Does It Influence the Diffusion of ACA Decisions?
We consider two ways that public opinion influenced the diffusion of ACA policy choices from 2010 through 2014. First, we consider the policy feedback mechanism, which suggests that policy decisions have spillover effects that influence opinions in other states; residents in the home state then influence the decisions of elected officials. We find that both gubernatorial ACA announcements and grant activity increased support for the ACA in nearby states. Consistent with our expectations, however, only gubernatorial announcements respond to shifts in ACA support, presumably because it is a more salient policy than grant act...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Pacheco, J., Maltby, E. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

The Seeds of Policy Change: Leveraging Diffusion to Disseminate Policy Innovations
We conduct a series of simulations to compare how various strategies for seeding a policy in the American states affect the rate at which that policy spreads. Using empirically derived parameters of the policy diffusion process, we simulate the diffusion of a hypothetical policy after seeding the policy in just a handful of states. We compare these strategies to seeding the ten states the RWJF monitored during the states' implementation of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. We attempt to mimic the choices that policy advocates make when deciding which states to target with their resources. Our results indicate that focusing ...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Boehmke, F. J., Rury, A. M., Desmarais, B. A., Harden, J. J. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

Rhetoric and Reform in Waiver States
Seven states have used Section 1115 waivers to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While each state pursued a unique plan, there are similarities in the types of changes each state desired to make. Equally important to how a state modified their Medicaid programs is how a state talked about Medicaid and reform. We investigate whether the rhetoric that emerged in waiver states is unique, analyze whether the rhetoric is associated with particular waiver reforms, and consider the implications of our findings for the future of Medicaid policy making. We find that proponents in waiver states have convinced...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Grogan, C. M., Singer, P. M., Jones, D. K. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research

The Future of Health Care Reform: What Is Driving Enrollment?
Against a backdrop of ongoing operational challenges, insurance market turbulence, and the ever present pull of partisanship, enrollment in the ACA's programs has soared and significant variations have developed across states in terms of their pace of coverage expansion. Our article explores why ACA enrollment has varied so dramatically across states. We explore the potential influence of party control, presidential cueing, administrative capacity, the reverberating effects of ACA policy decisions, affluence, and unemployment on enrollment. Our multivariate analysis finds that party control dominated early state decision m...
Source: Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law - March 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Callaghan, T. H., Jacobs, L. R. Tags: Health Policy & Education, Political Science, General, Public Policy Articles Source Type: research