Healthcare Policies and Policy Think Tanks

Assessing Entitlement Program and Healthcare Policy Reform

The Harvard Global Health Institute is committed to conducting global health research, education, and providing service to the community, with the aim of enabling policymakers to make better evidence-based recommendations and pass more just healthcare legislation. It is an organization that is committed to diversity and equality, and acknowledges the Native American tribal claims to the land on which it is located on its official website.

Education and Professional Background

The faculty director of the Institute, Dr. Louise C. Ivers, has a career committed to improving health access and equity for the urban and rural poor. She has worked in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa, with a focus on AIDS/HIV treatment, food insecurity, and cholera treatment (Our team, 2023).

Information on Programs

Although global in its focus, the Harvard Global Health Institute has specific sections on entitlement programs such as Medicare, including one 2018 report entitled “Persistence and Drivers of High-Cost Status Among Dual-Eligible Medicare and Medicaid Beneficiaries.” The report analyzed patterns of individuals enrolled in these programs, and found that most patients enrolled as dual-eligible beneficiaries had high medical costs over all 3 years of the study, and most of the costs were due to long-term care versus preventable hospitalizations (Figueroa et al., 2018). Patients who were persistently high cost to these programs were younger and had a higher rate of comorbidities and disabilities than those who were only transiently high cost.

A significant part of the mission of the Institute, also according to its website, is better understanding the needs of individuals who are both marginalized and have high levels of healthcare need. This includes individuals who qualify both for the state-regulated healthcare insurance program for the poor (Medicaid) and the federal healthcare insurance for the elderly (Medicare). The study encompassed 928,340 dual-eligible Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries enrolled from the years 2008-2010 who were alive all 3 years of the study. The study underlined the fact that preventative care will not necessarily result in reduced costs for patients who need the highest level of support, given that the majority of the care they received was not in the form of preventable hospital visits.

Ideological Mission of the Organization

The ideological mission of the Institute is explicitly stated on its website, which is to support marginalized individuals and social justice all over the world in their pursuit of equal access to healthcare. The organization, however, still grounds its recommendations in evidence-based practice and research. On its website, the organization states that equity and inclusion, in a spirit of social justice, are critical to improving global health, and the acknowledgement of disparities in health access has had a negative impact upon marginalized groups. The Institute’s mission acknowledges the “vast and ongoing impact of the historical legacies of racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression that continue to sustain such significant disparities in health and health outcomes” even while it grounds its challenges to these legacies in evidence-based research (Diversity, equity, and inclusion, 2023, par.1)

Assessment of the Organization