Milbank Memorial Fund

Rutgers Center for State Health Policy researchers found that homeless adult Medicaid beneficiaries in New Jersey have higher levels of health care needs and are more likely to visit the emergency department or require inpatient admissions. They conclude that offering tenancy support services that help homeless adults achieve stable housing may be a cost-effective strategy for improving the health of this vulnerable population while reducing spending on avoidable health care interventions. More

A 10% increase in pregnancy-related public health spending led to a 13.5% decline in maternal mortality rates among black mothers and a 20% reduction in the black-white maternal mortality gap in Florida between 2001 and 2014. More

Last summer, The Business Roundtable, the nonprofit association of CEOs of major US companies, issued a statement calling the interests of workers, customers, communities, and other stakeholders as important as the interests of a company’s shareholders. In a new Opinion, Harvard University’s John E. McDonough says the change is noteworthy. Yet he observes that only 11 of the 183 CEOs who signed the statement head organizations in the health sector. More

Medicaid has been under pressure for decades to show that it improves health outcomes, and this scrutiny has only increased with the current Medicaid expansion debate. In an early view opinion, new contributing writer Heidi Allen of Columbia University’s School of Social Work explains that Medicaid also faces problems related to stigma, and the fact it is funded by state tax dollars pits it against other policy sectors like education. More

This study finds that legislators’ opinions about the impact of parity laws on access to care, and the effectiveness of behavioral health treatment, have greater influence on support for the laws than political party affiliation or state-level contextual factors such as unemployment rates. More