An audible gasp went around Washington last week when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its first estimate of the cost of healthcare reform: $1 trillion. The cost seemed all […]
US healthcare
Vidhya Alakeson on the US stimulus bill
While Tom Daschle waits another week for his confirmation as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, health reform has got underway without him in the form of the stimulus […]
Vidhya Alakeson on US health reform
As with his presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s approach to health reform will leave little to chance. His strategy for enacting the first major coverage expansion in more than 40 years […]
Vidhya Alakeson on Obama’s health team
If, like me, you’re used to a parliamentary system where the party with a majority in Parliament runs the government and, if it has a big enough majority, pushes through […]
Anna Donald’s American dream
I have just finished sobbing for hours over Barak Obama’s winning the US Presidency. I lived in Boston, Palo Alto (California), and Albany New York as a small child. My […]
Vidhya Alakeson on the credit crunch and US health insurance
Banks, insurance companies and home owners have already fallen victim to the US financial crisis. Now healthcare is under fire. Last week, the state of Hawaii announced that it was […]
Vidhya Alakeson on parity for US mental health patients
Buried in last week’s legislation to bail out Wall Street was a small but important victory for healthcare in America. At the same time as passing a $700 billion rescue […]
Vidhya Alakeson: US presidential candidates’ health reform proposals
Yesterday, the Tax Policy Center released its initial analysis of the health reform plans of the two presidential campaigns. The center is a joint initiative of the Brookings Institution and […]
Vidhya Alakeson on the US election
After the Democratic Convention last week, when healthcare featured in almost every major speech, I had been waiting all week to see whether the Republicans would talk about it at […]