Insurance, Medicare & Medicaid

This report reviews strategies that aim to improve value in health care by helping consumers and purchasers differentiate between high- and low-value services and by making consumers more cost-conscious shoppers for services and insurance coverage.

This work, winner of the 2011 HSR Impact Award, helped explain the costs and benefits of expanding Medicaid at a time when states were making choices about whether and how to expand coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Evidence helped state policymakers understand a complex set of choices in a highly partisan environment.

In collaboration with the University of Kentucky, University of South Carolina’s Institute for Families in Society, and University of Louisiana Monroe, AcademyHealth’s Evidence-Informed State Health Policy Institute is assessing congenital syphilis rates among pregnant Medicaid enrollees in three southern states.