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The Abstract
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> Edited by Torie Ludwin, Arnold Ventures
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In some states, commercial health care prices (broadly, what hospitals charge private insurance) can average more than 5X what Medicare pays for the same service. This isn’t right, and this week two new tools launched to better help monitor hospital prices.
The RAND Hospital Price Transparency Study Round 5 gives employers access to the information on hospital prices they need to ultimately negotiate lower prices for their employees. Pairing data from this study with cost and quality data, the Sage Transparency data tool gives a fuller picture of a given hospital’s performance. One glaring takeaway? Higher prices do not mean better care.
“Tools like the latest iteration of the RAND study and Sage Transparency allow us to develop informed policy recommendations to better address the high health care costs that taxpayers, employers, and consumers are shouldering,” said Mark E. Miller, executive vice president of health care at Arnold Ventures.
Learn more about policy options at the state and federal level that address unfair rising health costs. |
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Building the Research Bench
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By Thomas Hanna, public affairs and communications manager, criminal justice
What’s Happening: As part of a new series profiling participants in SSRC’s Criminal Justice Innovation Fellowship program, which supports early-career researchers, AV spoke to Dr. Romaine Campbell, labor economist, about his work studying policing and prisons.
Why it Matters: Policing and prisons serve an important role in our criminal justice system, but they come with social and other costs. As part of the fellowship, Campbell will be conducting research on policies and interventions that could potentially mitigate these costs, including enhanced oversight of law enforcement agencies and higher education programs in prisons.
Read our profile of Romaine Campbell>
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11.7%
The improvement in 5-year graduation rates for undergraduate students in the CUNY ACE program
A new study finds that students at John Jay College who took part in the City University of New York (CUNY) Accelerate, Complete, Engage (ACE) program had a five-year bachelor’s degree graduation rate 11.7 percentage points higher than the control group – 68.8 percent vs. 57.1 percent.
The ACE program is an adaptation of the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), a program that has been demonstrated to be highly successful for associate degree-seeking students. These findings continue to underscore the effectiveness of the ASAP and ACE programs, which include academic advising, financial support, and career development, in boosting on-time graduation rates for students pursuing degrees.
Read the report>
Related: An interview with ACE Director DeLandra Hunter on these most recent findings
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Criminal Justice
- Bloomberg covers a new class action lawsuit alleging that the state of Alabama and private employers colluded to keep people incarcerated as a way to maintain and profit from a source of cheap labor.
- The Baltimore Banner reports on how a shortage of bed space in Maryland’s psychiatric hospitals combined with increase in psychiatric placements from courts in some counties has resulted in a situation in which people with severe mental illness are being incarcerated rather than provided the medical treatment they require.
Health Care
- For all types of hospitals, the average price for services was 288% of Medicare according to a new report on statewide hospital prices from the Washington Health Alliance.
- Last week Public Interest Patent Law Group (PIPLI) sent a letter — signed by Families USA, I-MAK, P4AD, Public Citizen, R Street, and T1International — to Sen. Durbin (D-IL) explaining how the PREVAIL Act will continue to allow manufacturers to take advantage of anticompetitive patent practices and drive up drug prices.
- In Health Affairs, Zachary Baron discusses recent wins for the Biden administration against industry-backed lawsuits targeting IRA Medicare drug price negotiations.
- The Center for Health Care Strategies released a primer on primary care population-based payment reform to help state Medicaid programs as they design and refine their own models.
Public Finance
Higher Education
- A new report by Preston Cooper at FREOPP finds that one-third of Pell grants go to educational programs that provide no positive return on investment for students.
- National College Attainment Network released a report outlining best practices on how to use postsecondary outcomes data to support improvements and policy decisions.
Infrastructure
- Following months of declines, rents are on the rise as the nation continues to see demand for new apartments, according to MultiFamilyDive.com.
- Canary Media reports on how the Lone Star State has become the hottest grid battery market in the country.
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- The Reverend William Lawson, founder of Wheeler Avenue Baptist and a longtime, renowned civil rights leader and icon in Houston, passed away this week at age 95. Fox26's Isiah Carey produced a video of Lawson's life alongside tributes from former and current leaders in Houston.
- The finalists of the 2024 Comedy Pet Photography Awards have been announced.
- The Smithsonian's photos from the aurora borealis are unreal. If you missed them last week, we are apparently in for a season of solar flares. Here's where you might see the northern lights this year; here's how they work.
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Torie
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| Torie Ludwin focuses on engagement with Arnold Ventures' core audiences (that's you). |
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