Disparities

Risk-adjusted rates or a case of gender discrimination?

That's exactly what Connecticut lawmakers are trying to figure out, according to the Hartford Courant. This week, lawmakers heard testimony on a proposal to ban the consideration of gender in determining health insurance rates on the individual market.

A report released by the National Women's Law Center in September found that 40-year-old women in Connecticut pay an average of four to 48 percent more for health insurance than 40-year-old males enrolled in the exact same plan. The range of variation in premiums increases for women over 55—they can pay anywhere between 37 percent more or 22 percent less than their male counterparts.

Even if you have the world's most optimistic boss, working on health reform has its ups and downs, and it's hard sometimes not to dwell on how past initiatives have crashed. So it's great to have sources of inspiration like Dr. Patricia Ann Thomas.

Quality is too often Jan in the Brady Bunch of health reform issues. The media and public tend to focus on the Marcias of cost and the Cindys of coverage. But New America's Health Policy Program has been dedicated to promoting an informed discussion of the entire family of issues. Today's event (video here) helpedto illustrate that improving quality must be central to any sustainable health reform.

What's better than one of New America's insightful and provocative events on health policy? Why two events, of course, which promise to give next week a healthy start and quality finish.

The Hispanic population in the U.S. has more than doubled in the past 15 years, to around 45 million. But it is an increasingly heterogeneous population.

The Washington Post, among others, has done some good reporting on the AIDS conference in Mexico City— including articles on HIV as the "uninvited hitchhiker" along the Mexico-U.S. border.

A few months ago, Lancet Oncology published a study that found cancer patients have better survival rates in the U.S. than in Europe, and now the journal has a second broader one showing the U.S. ahead of the rest of the world.

Who knew that prenatal care could be so much fun?

The rich don't just live differently than you and I. They live longer.