Are Health Insurers Villains?

Since I direct the ethics program at a health insurer (Harvard Pilgrim Health Care - a regional non profit company serving 1.1 million membe...

How Closely Have People Been Following the Debate?

The Kaiser Family Foundation survey has been asking a question this year that attempts to gauge how closely people have been following the ...

CBS News polling director Sarah Dutton examines trends in support for a public option, including the effects of question-wording ( hat tip ...

Insurers and Health Care Costs

In a recent interview, Senator Olympia Snowe commented - "We need a lever to force the [insurance] industry to drive down prices."...

Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal examines conservatives' criticism of question wording on the public option in a recent poll.

Andrew Gelman uses 2000 and 2004 polling data (2008 are not available) to examine support for federal spending to expand health-insurance co...

Is Ethics Relevant for Health Reform?

As I sat down to prepare a talk on health reform and ethics I'll be giving soon, a Tina Turner song started to play in my head - but wit...

Sen. Landrieu, the Public Option, and Free Lunches

Sen. Mary Landrieu, a relatively conservative Democratic U.S. senator from Louisiana, apparently is not on board for direct implementation o...

Why Comparative Effectiveness Research is so Important

I'm on the road now, and yesterday gave the talk I wrote about ( here ) last week. (I'm not writing about the venue of the talk sinc...

Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal examines the polling -- and there isn't a lot of it -- on the American public's knowledge of wha...

Economist Poll (But Not Others) Confirms Recent Surge (10/9)

Following up on my previous post, the just-released Economist/YouGov poll (in the field October 4-6) shows 52% support for President Obama...

Can we Discuss "How Much is Life Worth" without going ballistic?

I've been invited to speak next week at a conference based on the article by Tito Fojo and Christine Grady ("How Much is Life Worth...

European Country going back to Private Insurance

PBS had an interesting program about The Netherlands Health system last night. The Netherlands (Dutch), has been on the cutting edge of a nu...

Support for Reform May Be Rising, Following Mid-September Swoon (10/7)

Over at Pollster.com, Brendan Nyhan has reviewed trends in support for health care reform in the weeks following President Obama's spee...

Nate Silver suggests that unusually low levels of support for health care reform in FOX News polls may stem from question-order effects .

Comments on Resurgent Republic Analysis (10/4)

The right-leaning political-analysis group Resurgent Republic recently issued a brief synopsis of national polls, arguing that a trio of is...