{"title":"Escaping Policy Traps: Strategic Options for Overcoming Entrenchment.","authors":"Paul Starr","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10234142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10234142","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Policy entrenchment per se is a neutral concept; both good and bad policies may become entrenched. A policy trap, however, is entrenchment's pathological form: a self-reinforcing array of policies that simultaneously creates (1) well-established, often widely recognized failures in society, and (2) high barriers to change. A familiar type of policy trap arises when the benefits of a policy are concentrated while the costs, albeit greater, are widely diffused, opaque to many who bear them, or seemingly remote. But policy traps are not necessarily permanent; they may persist only as long as reformers are unable to identify their vulnerabilities and seize moments of political opportunity. Reconstituting a domain of policy ultimately requires formulating an alternative. Without presuming to be exhaustive, this article outlines four general strategies for overcoming policy entrenchment: Schumpeterian innovation, globally oriented innovation, institutional conversion, and social creativity (the nonmarket analog to Schumpeterian change). Focusing on three areas, the article examines how policy traps have arisen and might be overcome in fossil fuels, the internet economy, and the US health care system.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"48 2","pages":"135-156"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9681540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Political Economy of Market Power in Pharmaceuticals.","authors":"Amy Kapczynski","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10234184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10234184","url":null,"abstract":"The pharmaceutical industry is among the most politically powerful in the US today. This article describes how industry successfully has entrenched its power, with attention to four sources of power: property power, vertical power over politics, ideational power, and material power. Attempts to reform the industry must grapple with these forms of power, which are not easily separated and in the current environment tend to reinforce one another.","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"48 2","pages":"215-239"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9684492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms US Health Care","authors":"Daniel Scott","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10640255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10640255","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"93 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88367178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Political Partisanship, Trust, and Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccines in Indonesia.","authors":"Iim Halimatusa'diyah, Tati Lathipatud Durriyah","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10171076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10171076","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>This study examines the extent to which political partisanship-measured as support for either the incumbent candidate for Indonesia's presidency, Joko Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi), or for Jokowi's challenger, Prabowo-affects individuals' risk perception of COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal as well as beliefs about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The authors performed multinomial logistic and ordinary least squares regression analyses on a nationally representative sample of a national survey on public trust in COVID-19 vaccines and vaccinations that was conducted in December 2020.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>Individuals who voted for Prabowo in the 2019 presidential election were more likely to have a lower level of willingness and a higher level of hesitancy to get the COVID-19 vaccine than those who cast their ballot for Jokowi as the Indonesian president.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Political partisanship does matter in shaping individuals' hesitancy or refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Indonesia. The effect of partisanship is also significant in shaping individuals' trust in the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, but it is not significantly associated with individuals' risk perceptions.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"48 1","pages":"35-61"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10571806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lynn A Blewett, Natalie Schwehr Mac Arthur, James Campbell
{"title":"The Future of State All-Payer Claims Databases.","authors":"Lynn A Blewett, Natalie Schwehr Mac Arthur, James Campbell","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10171104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10171104","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>State policy makers are under increasing pressure to address the prohibitive cost of health care given the lack of action at the federal level. In 2020, the United States spent more on health care than any other country in the world-$4.1 trillion, representing 19.7% of the nation's gross domestic product. States are trying to better understand their role in health care spending and to think creatively about strategies for addressing health care cost growth. One way they are doing this is through the development and use of state-based all-payer claims databases (APCDs). APCDs are health data organizations that hold transactional information from public (Medicare and Medicaid) and private health insurers (commercial plans and some self-insured employers). APCDs transform this data into useful information on health care costs and trends. This article describes states' use of APCDs and recent efforts that have provided benefits and challenges for states interested in this unique opportunity to inform health policy. Although challenges exist, there is new funding for state APCD improvements in the No Surprises Act, and potential new federal interest will help states enhance their APCD capacity so they can better understand their markets, educate consumers, and create actionable market information.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"48 1","pages":"93-115"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10571804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Steven B Spivack, Genevra F Murray, Valerie A Lewis
{"title":"A Decade of ACOs in Medicare: Have They Delivered on Their Promise?","authors":"Steven B Spivack, Genevra F Murray, Valerie A Lewis","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10171090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10171090","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Accountable care organizations (ACOs) were envisioned as a way to address both health care cost growth and uneven quality in US health care. They emerged in the early 2000s, with the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) establishing a Medicare ACO program. In the decade since their launch, ACOs have grown into one of Medicare's flagship payment reform programs, with millions of beneficiaries receiving care from hundreds of ACOs. While great expectations surrounded ACOs' introduction into Medicare, their impacts to date have been modest. ACOs have achieved some savings and improvements in measured quality, but disagreement persists over the meaning of those results: Do ACOs represent important, incremental steps forward on the path toward a more efficient, high-quality health care system? Or do their modest achievements signal a failure of large-scale progress despite the substantial investments of resources? ACOs have proven to be politically resilient, largely sidestepping the controversies and partisan polarization that have led to the demise of other ACA provisions. But the same features that have enabled ACOs to evade backlash have constrained their impacts and effectiveness. After a decade, ACOs' long-term influence on Medicare and the US health care system remains uncertain.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"48 1","pages":"63-92"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10681956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rachel Presskreischer, Colleen L Barry, Adria K Lawrence, Alexander McCourt, Ramin Mojtabai, Emma E McGinty
{"title":"Factors Affecting State-Level Enforcement of the Federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act: A Cross-Case Analysis of Four States.","authors":"Rachel Presskreischer, Colleen L Barry, Adria K Lawrence, Alexander McCourt, Ramin Mojtabai, Emma E McGinty","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10171062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10171062","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Context: </strong>The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) requires coverage for mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) benefits to be no more restrictive than for medical/surgical benefits in commercial health plans. State insurance departments oversee enforcement for certain plans. Insufficient enforcement is one potential source of continued MH/SUD treatment gaps among commercial insurance enrollees. This study explored state-level factors that may drive enforcement variation.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The authors conducted a four-state multiple-case study to explore factors influencing state insurance offices' enforcement of MHPAEA. They interviewed 21 individuals who represented state government offices, advocacy organizations, professional organizations, and a national insurer. Their analysis included a within-case content analysis and a cross-case framework analysis.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>Common themes included insurance office relationships with other stakeholders, policy complexity, and political priority. Relationships between insurance offices and other stakeholders varied between states. MHPAEA complexity posed challenges for interpretation and application. Policy champions influenced enforcement via priorities of insurance commissioners, governors, and legislatures. Where enforcement of MHPAEA was not prioritized by any actors, there was minimal state enforcement.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Within a state, enforcement of MHPAEA is influenced by insurance office relationships, legal interpretation, and political priorities. These unique state factors present significant challenges to uniform enforcement.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"48 1","pages":"1-34"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9938503/pdf/nihms-1865998.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9307904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rachel E Sachs, Shelley A Jazowski, Kyle A Gavulic, Julie M Donohue, Stacie B Dusetzina
{"title":"Medicaid and Accelerated Approval: Spending on Drugs with and without Proven Clinical Benefits.","authors":"Rachel E Sachs, Shelley A Jazowski, Kyle A Gavulic, Julie M Donohue, Stacie B Dusetzina","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10041107","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10041107","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Many state Medicaid officials are concerned about rising prescription drug spending, particularly drugs approved through the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) accelerated approval pathway. The authors examined how much of Medicaid programs' accelerated approval spending is attributable to products that have demonstrated clinical benefits versus those that have not. Their findings provide support for states' concerns that pharmaceutical companies often fail to complete their required postapproval confirmatory studies within the FDA's requested timeline. But the findings also highlight one issue that policy stakeholders have not yet devoted substantial attention to: the use of surrogate endpoints involved in the postapproval confirmatory studies for most of the products in this study's sample. The granularity of the study's results enabled an analysis of the impact of different policy recommendations on both the accelerated approval pathway and Medicaid programs. These findings inform the current policy debate, suggesting that policy stakeholders might focus attention on products converting their approval on the basis of surrogate outcomes rather than on clinical outcomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"47 6","pages":"673-690"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9789165/pdf/nihms-1826620.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10464411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Samantha G Auty, Kevin N Griffith, Paul R Shafer, Rebekah E Gee, Rena M Conti
{"title":"Improving Access to High-Value, High-Cost Medicines: The Use of Subscription Models to Treat Hepatitis C Using Direct-Acting Antivirals in the United States.","authors":"Samantha G Auty, Kevin N Griffith, Paul R Shafer, Rebekah E Gee, Rena M Conti","doi":"10.1215/03616878-10041121","DOIUrl":"10.1215/03616878-10041121","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>State payers may face financial incentives to restrict use of high-cost medications. Yet, restrictions on access to high-value medications may have deleterious effects on population health. Direct-acting antivirals (DAAs), available since 2013, can cure chronic infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV). With prices upward of $90,000 for a treatment course, states have struggled to ensure access to DAAs for Medicaid beneficiaries and the incarcerated, populations with a disproportionate share of HCV. Advance purchase commitments (APCs), wherein a payer commits to purchase a certain quantity of medications at lower prices, offer payers incentives to increase access to high-value medications while also offering companies guaranteed revenue. This article discusses the use of subscription models, a type of APC, to support increased access to high-value DAAs for treating HCV. First, the authors provide background information about HCV, its treatment, and state financing of prescription medications. They then review the implementation of HCV subscription models in two states, Louisiana and Washington, and the early evidence of their impact. The article discusses challenges to evaluating state-sponsored subscription models, and it concludes by discussing implications of subscription models that target DAAs and other high-value, high-cost medicines.</p>","PeriodicalId":54812,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law","volume":"47 6","pages":"691-708"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9789167/pdf/nihms-1826577.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10817506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}