Study investigates impact of health reform act policies
John Graves, Ph.D., assistant professor of Preventive Medicine and member of the Institute for Medicine and Public Health and the Center for Health Services Research, is studying the potential impact of insurance expansion policies that states are considering as part of the Affordable Care Act.
John Graves, Ph.D.
In a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Graves and his co-authors used “micro-simulation” models to show that proposed Basic Health Programs, intended to help avoid repeated plan and provider switching for patients whose incomes change, may only add to further switching unless the plans are properly designed and applied.
Legislators in California, Washington and elsewhere are looking at the results with great interest as they finalize their plans to meet the 2014 insurance expansion mandates in the Affordable Care Act. Graves says using research to help scrutinize policy alternatives is the whole point.
“The amount of time states have to make legislative decisions narrows quickly. In the next six months a lot of action has to happen, but policies, even with the best intentions, could compromise quality and access to health care.
“Policymakers are asking, ‘if you change the law, how would that affect people?’ We have the option to use micro-simulation methods to provide an integrated, empirically driven framework to understand what unknown consequences might occur,” Graves said.
Robert Dittus, M.D., MPH, associate vice chancellor for Public Health & Health Care and senior associate dean for Population Health Sciences, says this paper, and the addition of Graves to the faculty in the Department of Preventive Medicine, is evidence of Vanderbilt becoming a nationally known, multi-disciplinary base for health policy research and design.
Graves came to Vanderbilt in July after completing his Ph.D. in Health Policy at Harvard.
Before coming to Vanderbilt, he worked with Jonathan Gruber, an Obama administration adviser and MIT economist, to provide budgetary modeling assistance to White House and Department of Health and Human Services officials involved in the development of the Affordable Care Act.
Nashville is a return home of sorts for Graves, who is a graduate of the University of the South in Sewanee. His father, Robert Graves, was associate administrator of ambulatory services at Vanderbilt University Hospital during the 1980s.