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Health Policy
Nicole Rapfogel is a research associate for Health Policy at American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, she interned with the Field and Outreach team at Population Connection, where she organized and advocated for U.S. policy to advance global reproductive health and rights. She graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a bachelor’s degree in public policy and global health. Her undergraduate research focused on contraceptive counseling and patient-provider communication.
Public health plays a key role in keeping us all safe and healthy. This video shows how public health works and calls for investment in the nation’s public health system.
Policymakers could make behavioral health care, including mental health services, more affordable and accessible by enforcing network adequacy and parity provisions, lowering patient costs, and making networking with insurers more attractive for providers.
To improve health and well-being, policymakers must act to address inequities, infrastructure, and social determinants of health that contribute to poor health.
Policies to strengthen the nation’s health must ensure that individuals and communities are healthy, thriving, and inclusive through long-term, sustained investments.
Unless Congress acts soon to extend the American Rescue Plan subsidies, marketplace enrollees will face higher health care costs in 2023 and 3 million people will become uninsured.
As the conclusion of the national public health emergency looms, state and federal policymakers should improve continuity of care for millions of Medicaid enrollees facing disenrollment and preserve critical access to COVID-19 testing and treatment.
North Carolina has leveraged Medicaid to design a comprehensive approach toward health care that addresses unmet social needs.
North Carolina has developed a large-scale, comprehensive approach to addressing unmet nonmedical needs—including food, housing, and transportation insecurity—through Medicaid.
The reconciliation package should ensure that millions don’t lose enhanced financial assistance and should expand eligibility for marketplace subsidies.
Reforms to let Medicare negotiate prices, cap out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, and limit insulin cost-sharing would make lifesaving drugs more affordable.