Initiative Helps States With Long-Term Care Options; Reports Examine Medicare Advantage, U.S. Health System

• "Long-Term Care Partnership Expansion: A New Opportunity for States," Center for Health Care Strategies: A CHCS initiative will help 10 states form public-private partnerships to create affordable insurance options for seniors. The initiative is in response to new laws that allow states to pursue such partnerships to provide long-term care to the growing baby boomer population and to protect state Medicaid programs (Center for Health Care Strategies release, 5/14).
  
  
• "Medicare Advantage in 2006-2007: What Congress Intended?" Health Affairs: In the Health Affairs Web exclusive, Marsha Gold, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, examined the 2003 Medicare law and its efforts to make Medicare Advantage plans more widely available. She finds that much of the growth has occurred among private fee-for-service plans and suggests that "policies that use scarce resources to encourage competition among largely unmanaged FFS plans is an issue that warrants discussion" (Gold, Health Affairs, 5/15).
  
  
• "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An Update on the Quality of American Health Care," Commonwealth Fund: The report uses international health policy surveys to compare measures of health care quality, access, efficiency, equity and outcomes in the U.S. and five other nations. According to the report, the U.S. ranked low on measures of safe and coordinated care but did well on some preventive care measures. A separate Commonwealth Fund report compares health spending data in industrialized nations (Commonwealth Fund release, 5/15).