Health Care Policy

Large rendering of the healthcare cross symbol with people standing both on top of and below the symbol against a background featuring the coronavirus germ floating nearby.

Exacerbating the health care divide

With rates of diagnoses and death disproportionately affecting racial minorities and low-income workers, experts from the School of Arts & Sciences address how COVID-19 has further exposed already dire health outcome inequalities.

From Omnia ・

Penn student Darcey Hookway

Aging and the costs that come with it

As a high school student, junior Darcey Hookway spent time volunteering on a dementia ward at a local hospital. “The social aspect of their condition really struck me,” says Hookway, who is from London. “They struggled immensely with social isolation. And now with COVID exacerbating that more than ever, I think that’s a huge detriment to their health.”

Katherine Unger Baillie ・



In the News


The Hill

How the pandemic is changing medicine

PIK Professor Jonathan D. Moreno and the Law School’s Stephen N. Xenakis wrote that the pandemic could change many countries’ approaches to public health. “The battle against the virus presents an opportunity to recalibrate our health care system as well as advance our practices,” they wrote.

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KCRW Radio (Santa Monica, Calif.)

How will COVID-19 leave its mark on health care?

Amol Navathe of the Perelman School of Medicine says the American health care system has demonstrated its adaptability during the past three months and called for both a new financial model and greater investments in technology.

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The New York Times

How health insurers can be heroes. Really

Amol Navathe of the Perelman School of Medicine and PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel called for health insurers to support customers by cutting premiums and co-payments, help hospitals and doctors by switching to a fixed-fee model, and work with public health officials to expand COVID-19 testing and establish contact tracing.

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The New Yorker

Imagining a justice-based health system

Jennifer Prah Ruger of the School of Social Policy & Practice was interviewed about health inequity in the time of the coronavirus. “We need to recognize, now more than ever, given this latest pandemic, that [science] is a major area for investment going forward,” she said.

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Philadelphia Inquirer

Medicaid block grant proposals spell trouble for patients and hospitals

Health System CEO Kevin Mahoney wrote an op-ed about proposals he believes would erode Medicaid. The proposed plans “represent a return to bad policy that would chip away at medical care for the nation’s most vulnerable citizens and further stress the precarious operations of many hospitals,” he writes.

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Politico.com

Obamacare’s secret success

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel and Cathy Zhang and Aaron Glickman of the Perelman School of Medicine wrote about the successes of the Affordable Care Act. “This coverage triumph does not mean that the American health care system does not need reform. But it does demonstrate that the ACA can catalyze near-universal coverage. And by adopting some modest policy reforms, every state, and the country as a whole, can get there, too,” they wrote.

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