Insurance, Medicare & Medicaid

In a recent conversation on the Analyzing Healthcare podcast AcademyHealth President and CEO Aaron Carroll offered a candid look at the challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. health system today. Carroll emphasized that today’s health care debate requires more than simple narratives. It requires evidence and leadership committed to long‑term solutions.

H.R. 1’s drastic changes to Medicaid eligibility—particularly for some legal migrants and people swept up in work requirements—will trigger unprecedented levels of benefit denials, reductions, and terminations. Each action carries the legal obligation of due process: meaningful notice and a fair hearing.

As the U.S. faces a worsening maternal health crisis, new federal Medicaid reforms could widen racial, economic, and geographic disparities in pregnancy and postpartum care, warns a Health Affairs Forefront article by AcademyHealth researchers. Citing findings from the Doula Research for Equitable Advances in Medicaid Pregnancy Health (DREAM) project, the authors caution that proposed changes may erode recent gains in maternal health equity and urge policymakers to protect access to essential care.

The TAF Analysis Reporting Checklist is designed to guide reporting of research using the TAF Medicaid claims data. It serves to promote transparency and reproducibility in TAF-based studies.

In an article in JAMA Health Forum, Medicaid Data Learning Network (MDLN) authors discuss the impetus for creating the T-MSIS Analytic Files (TAF) Analysis Reporting Checklist and the methodology used to do so.

This policy brief by Emma Mairson from the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and AcademyHealth’s Project DREAM describes six state efforts to create a doula benefit in Medicaid.

Research nominated as the best abstract for each theme from the 2025 Call for Abstracts explores topics related to how prepared hospitals are for the next pandemic, gender differences in primary care physician earnings and outcomes, and methods for decomposing heterogeneous treatment effects.

2025 ARM Theme Leader Stacie Dusetzina highlights sessions to attend related to Medicare at the upcoming conference this June in Minneapolis.

In a guest essay for the New York Times, Aaron Carroll describes how proposed cuts to Medicaid would be catastrophic to Americans’ access to care.

As lead clinicians for their states with responsibility for overseeing clinical care and stewardship of resources, Medicaid Medical Directors propose policy recommendations to ensure equitable access to cell and gene therapies.