The MHA@GW students visited government and healthcare facilities in Jerusalem and the Negev Desert and discussed issues including health policy, long term care and dealing with mass casualties.

Students in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University’s MHA@GW program recently took a 5-day trip to Israel, a country and region that experiences intense environmental pressures. The trip's leader explains the value of studying health policy and management in a country that succeeds in guaranteeing a comprehensive basket of health services to all citizens and permanent residents with public health outcomes that are among the best in the world, all at a cost of 7.4% of its GDP.

The District of Columbia recently took an important step to protect health insurance coverage by creating a District-specific health insurance requirement.  This is in response to the unexpected termination of the federal health insurance requirement, which Congress narrowly passed last December.  The Affordable Care Act had required that federal taxpayers, except some with low incomes, to have health insurance or pay a federal income tax penalty.  The underlying logic was that this would incentivize more people to get coverage and prevent insurance premiums from rising for the great majori

Last December’s tax law eliminated the tax penalty associated with the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) individual shared responsibility penalty (or individual mandate).  Although the mandate still exists in the ACA, the financial penalty associated with not purchasing affordable insurance has been eliminated.