Health Policy Podcasts

Hosted by Penn RWJF Clinical Scholars and co-produced with Penn's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, the RWJF Clinical Scholars Health Policy Podcast is a monthly series featuring interviews with health policy experts who are visitors, alumni, or faculty of the Clinical Scholars Program.

Former U.S. Surgeon General and Director of the Centers for Disease Control David Satcher, MD, PhD, is interviewed at the University of Pennsylvania by RWFJ Clinical Scholar Loren Robinson, MD. He noted that one of the least talked about aspects of the Affordable Care Act is the "Prevention Agenda" that addresses a broad range of social determinants of health but hasn't been funded by Congress.

The accountable care organization (ACO) concept, a core element of the Affordable Care Act, is not likely to reach its full potential until there are dramatic changes across the culture of physicians and hospitals, said Kavita Patel, MD (UCLA CSP 03 - 05), in an interview at the University of Pennsylvania. The former Director of Policy in the Obama White House was interviewed by Penn Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Anita, Ravi, MD, MPH.

In an interview with University of Pennsylvania Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar Loren Robinson, RWJF chief Risa Lavizzo-Mourey clarified her organization's earlier announcement that the clinical scholars program would be closed in 2017.

One of the least appreciated future problems for customers of the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges is "reconciliation," said Law Professor Timothy Jost at a University of Pennsylvania policy seminar. Jost, a nationally renowned authority on the legal points of the health reform law, explained that people who work multiple part-time jobs or move from job to job can't reliably predict what their annual income will be -- a key element used in determining how high a health insurance tax subsidy they qualify for. If their early guess gives them a larger subsidy than their later income justifies, they will have to pay the money back -- or have it deducted from their annual income tax refund. "This will come as a huge shock" to a lot of people said Jost, a professor at Washington and Lee University and regular blogger for the journal, Health Affairs.

Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Elizabeth Brown, MD, interviews Scott Armstrong, President and CEO of the Group Health Cooperative. Established in 1947, Group Health is an insurance company as well as a health care system that has 600,000 members and networks of clinics, community health centers and urgent care centers throughout Washington State and Idaho. In this 3-minute video excerpt, Armstrong suggests Health Group's decision to close all of its hospitals but keep all of its doctors is one of the dramatic kinds of changes that other health systems will be forced to embrace in his new era of health reform.

In this video interview with David Grande, Associate Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program, Harvard professor Sharon-Lise Normand discusses her recent work on the Food and Drug Administration's new medical device database. The issue of the United States' lack of a unique device identifier system for medical devices has become an increasing concern in the wake of large-scale problems and recalls with metal-on-metal hip implants, drug-eluding stents and implanted cardiac defibrillators.

In this four-minute, twenty-eight second interview with Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price at the University of Pennsylvania, New York State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah discusses the successes and frustrations of his first two years in office. Shah, who oversees a $50 billion department, has gotten high marks for his health system reform efforts but he also points out some of the goals he has not been able to achieve. One of those is federal funding for "supportive housing" that offers chronically ill, low-income individuals subsidized living quarters in building complexes that also contain in-house medical and social services counseling. Shah was at Penn to deliver the annual Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics' Samuel Martin Memorial Lecture on health care policy. Also, see the text article about this event or the video of Shah's full 69-minute presentation at Penn.

See related article on RWJF.org >

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Over the last four years, 22 states and six cities have introduced legislation to levy taxes on sugary beverage sales but the $125 billion-a-year U.S. beverage industry has defeated every one of those efforts. University of Minnesota professor Sarah Gollust, who specializes in researching public opinion dynamics and obesity prevention, is exploring strategies that might help to offset that industry's political messaging. In this interview with University of Pennsylvania Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price, Gollust discusses her latest work.

Using an analysis of the Tennessee Public Health Insurance Program, Craig Garthwaite, PhD, predicts why a significant number of people are likely to leave their jobs once the Affordable Care Act provides them with public health insurance. In an interview with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price, MD, the health economist from Northwestern University explains how the data from a little-studied TennCare situation suggests that as many as 900,000 people throughout the U.S. may no longer feel the need to keep their jobs once subsidized health insurance becomes available through the state health insurance exchanges.

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In a video interview with University of Pennsylvania Wharton School economics professor Mark Pauly, Chileshe Nkonde-Price, MD, discusses the price of hospital care for patients covered by public and private insurance. The issue has been much in the news and public debate in the wake of a special issue of Time magazine that published the most extensive report ever written about the little-known systems hospitals use to set prices hundreds or even thousands of times higher than the real costs of the services they provide. This is the third in a new series of online video and audio casts jointly produced by LDI and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program.

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Although the U.S. public expects quick and massive government response to natural and man-made disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, terror attacks and mass school shootings, federal and state legislative budget cutters have quietly eliminated 45,000 public health jobs during the last several years, according to Nicole Lurie, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services. That fact and its implications were among the points she emphasized in this seventeen minute interview at the University of Pennsylvania. In the discussion with Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price, MD, Lurie, MD, MSPH, also pointed out various areas of the health-related disaster response field that appear ripe for further scholarly study.

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Elliott Fisher, MD, MPH, the health policy researcher who originally coined the term "Accountable Care Organization," is interviewed during a visit to the University of Pennsylvania immediately after he was named Director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. The Institute, which oversees operation of the famed "Dartmouth Atlas," is one of the most influential academic organizations in the field of healthcare policy research. Interviewed by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price, MD, Fisher discusses the formative days of the ACO idea and the many challenges the concept faces as proponents work to evolve it into a central structure of the Affordable Care Act's broad reforms.

Listen to archived Health Policy podcasts | 2010 | 2011 |