Now that US health care reform has finally passed, everyone is scrambling to decipher what it actually means for America’s future.  Healthy Policies has been pretty quiet on the HCR front. This is because while the passage of this bill will definitely provide more people with access to health care, the impact HCR will  have [...]

Two major health inequality reports were recently released, one in the UK and the other in the US. This is the final post in a series which seeks to better understand the health perspective of these reports. Understanding variations in how health inequality research is pursued is important because health perspectives can undermine attention to the broader determinants of health inequalities and hinder the development of healthy public policies. While the true policy implications of the reports remain to be seen, the difference in health perspectives of the two reports is astounding.

The Coalition on Human Needs is teaming up with other organizations and “calling on all members of the Senate to put aside partisan games, to put aside rhetoric and enact legislation that has broad bi-partisan support – an extension of unemployment benefits and the COBRA health care subsidy through the end of 2010.”

While Congress and popular media outlets struggle to recover from their tizzy over bipartisan health care reform, 1.2 million Americans lost their unemployment benefits Sunday. And all thanks to a single-handed effort by Republican Sen Jim Bunning of Kentucky.

Senators Kyl and Grassey are blocking the consideration of bill that would extend unemployment benefits to millions of workless Americans. That is unless Congress agrees to permanently weaken the estate tax. Holding hostage the livelihoods of hard-hit Americans, the priorities of Kyl and Grassey are clear.

Last week and just days apart, two major reviews of health inequalities were released, Fair Society, Healthy Lives in the UK and County Health Rankings in the US. Understanding variations in how health inequality research is pursued is important because research which emphasizes an individualized model of health undermines attention to the broader determinants of health and the development of healthy public policy.