Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts (COMPARE)
RAND Health
COMPARE is a transparent, evidence-based approach to providing information and tools to help policymakers, the media, and other interested parties understand, design, and evaluate health policies.
COMPARE has four objectives:
- Synthesize what is known about the current health care system.
- Describe policy options that have been proposed to address one or more existing challenges.
- Analyze the effects of different health care policy options on multiple dimensions of health system performance.
- Identify gaps in our knowledge about the effects of policy changes.
COMPARE was developed to help public and private decisionmakers systematically assess and compare the effects of different policies across multiple dimensions of health care system performance, encompassing cost, quality, and access. COMPARE gives users a comprehensive framework in which to examine both the intended and unintended effects of changes in health care policy and to examine trade-offs across policies, or across different dimensions of performance for any particular policy (e.g., the effect on spending compared to the effect on insurance coverage or on patient experience).
The Web site includes four main sections, U.S. Health Care Today, Policy Options, Analysis of Options, and Modeling Estimates.
http://www.rand.org/health/feature/compare/
Press release:
http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-13-2009/0004954039&EDATE=
And…
RAND COMPARE
Policy Options – Change Insurance Coverage
* Individual Mandate
* Employer Mandate
* Purchasing Pools
* Refundable Tax Credit
* Medicaid/SCHIP Eligibility
* Open Enrollment in FEHBPModeling Estimates – Policy Options
* Tax Credit
* Medicaid Expansion
* Individual Mandate
* Employer Mandate
Who funds COMPARE?
AARP
Abraxis BioScience, Patrick Soon-Shiong MD, Founder, Chairman, and CEO
Aetna Foundation
Alcoa
Amgen Foundation
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
California HealthCare Foundation
The Funari Family Foundation
General Motors Foundation
Johnson & Johnson
Karen Katen
Charles N. Martin Jr., The Martin Foundation
Pacific Business Group on Health
Pfizer
RAND Corporate Endowment
RAND Health Board, designated gifts from individual members
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
John J. Rydzewski
Leonard D. Schaeffer
The Suzanne Nora Johnson and David G. Johnson Foundation
United Health Foundation
Wellpoint Foundation
http://www.randcompare.org/
To generate custom reports:
http://www.randcompare.org/analysis/reports/
RAND COMPARE provides both a valuable information resource on U.S. health care today, and an interactive tool that can be used to evaluate the impact of various policy options under different models of reform. It has now been released for public use.
Elizabeth McGlynn and Jeffrey Wasserman are codirectors of COMPARE. On a Webinar event January 13, the release of COMPARE was announced along with a discussion of how it works. When I noted that a single, public insurance model (single payer or Medicare for all) was not an option available on the COMPARE website, Dr. McGlynn assured me that it was a model that should be added.
In their press release they stated, "An individual mandate is the most cost-effective strategy for decreasing the number of uninsured." Innumerable other studies comparing models of reform have shown that a single payer model is the most cost-effective strategy and actually eliminates the uninsured. Models based on private insurance, such as the individual mandate, have been shown to be less effective, according to these other studies.
The sponsors surely support RAND’s function as "a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis," and would want to see that objective data on the single payer model be made available immediately for comparison with the other options.
Since we are entering a period of intense activity in health care reform, it would be helpful to have the single payer model added as expeditiously as possible. If you agree, then please send a very brief message requesting that single payer be added ASAP. Email them at: COMPARE@rand.org
You may wish to share this message with others and ask them to make the same request.