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The Abstract
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> By Torie Ludwin, Arnold Ventures
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Communications Manager Thomas Hanna explains the benefits of change that comes from within – especially change supported by research.
Cable news pundits and partisan politicians like to push an “activists vs. establishment” narrative when it comes to improving the criminal justice system. Only in soundbites are systems quite so binary. The reality is that law enforcement officers, corrections administrators, supervision officials, and many others with first-hand experience can routinely have a key role in diagnosing system failures and advancing innovative solutions.
For instance, in North Carolina, law enforcement leaders have been critical players in a push to implement and expand alternative crisis response models – like the HEART program in Durham, which dispatches mental health clinicians to certain emergency calls.
Based on AV-supported analysis of 911 calls by RTI in several North Carolina jurisdictions, officials like Chief John Thompson in Greensboro recently realized that police officers were spending considerable time and resources responding to non-emergency and non-criminal traffic accidents. Armed with this data, Thompson and other law enforcement voices – including the North Carolina Chiefs of Police Association – led a bipartisan state legislative effort during the 2023 session to enable local civilian accident response.
Following this success, Chief Thompson plans to hire, train, and equip five civilian investigators who will soon be able to respond to accidents and help motorists in distress. In turn, Greensboro’s police officers will have more time and capacity to focus on larger public safety concerns such as preventing and solving serious crimes.
During Pretrial, Probation, and Parole Supervision (PPPS) Week, AV profiled supervision officials across the country who, similar to Chief Thompson, are advancing much-needed reforms to support these burdened systems. These efforts are intended to benefit the more than 3.7 million people under community supervision as well as the under-resourced and overworked officers working with them.
At Arnold Ventures, we know that those responsible for managing a broken system are often the most aware of what needs fixing – and how. Read our latest stories on law enforcement leading the push for reform in crisis response and community supervision.
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Improving the Umbrella of Care for Dual-Eligible People
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By Amy Abdnor and Emma Liebman, Arnold Ventures
By 2034, there will be more people in the United States over the age of 65 than under the age of 18. This demographic trend means growing demand for health-related services and programs that allow Americans to stay in their communities and live in their homes as they age. Dual-eligible Americans — people who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid — need similar care.
What’s Happening: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services(CMS) recently released two proposed rules that, if finalized, would make widespread reforms to the delivery of home and community care services paid for by Medicaid, which pays for almost half of all such services nationwide. AV has responded by submitting two letters that identify ways the dual-eligible population can be part of the conversation.
Why It Matters: About 12.2 million people in the U.S. are covered by both Medicare and Medicaid. If long-term care services are not coordinated with other health care services, such as primary care doctors, then these individuals may fall through the cracks and not receive the support they need to lead healthy lives in their communities.
What’s Next: Attempting to improve access to these services — such as with CMS’ two new proposed rules — will help provide what people want, can lead to better outcomes, and can save the government money.
Read our letters>
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How Much For That Blood Test?
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By Evan Mintz, director of communications
Consumers have a right to know what they pay for health care services before they happen — and Congress can expand and improve transparency over health care prices.
What's Happening: Arnold Ventures joined a non-partisan group of organizations that represent consumers, patients, businesses, purchasers, and physicians to call for Congress to pass legislation that would improve price transparency in health care and make the data more usable and accessible.
Why It Matters: Consumers are often left in the dark about the actual costs of procedures and services. They can face wildly different prices for the same services depending on their provider. For example, the price of a blood test in El Paso, Texas ranges from $144 to $952. Greater price transparency can also arm purchasers and policymakers with data to inform effective solutions to address high health care spending.
What's Next: The Hospital Price Transparency Rule, which went into effect in January 2021, requires hospitals to publicly publish certain prices, though compliance has been mixed. Congress can take steps to improve it by codifying this rule into law, ensuring the data provided is usable and accessible, and strengthening enforcement for noncompliance.
Read our story>
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Criminal Justice
- The Gothamist commented on a new report from the Center for Justice Innovation on youth gun culture in New York City.
- USA Today covers a report from the DOJ’s Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that contains over 30 recommendations related to access to counsel in BOP pretrial facilities.
- The Marshall Project has published an article on continued problems with access to counsel in rural jurisdictions 60 years after the Supreme Court’s Gideon v. Wainwright decision.
- In an opinion released July 18, the Illinois Supreme Court held the Pretrial Fairness Act — and its elimination of cash bail — constitutional, reversing a circuit court decision. The decision has been covered in numerous outlets, including op-eds and editorials in Reuters, The News-Gazette, and the Los Angeles Times.
- Firearms industry interests and some Republicans are working to roll back recent gun violence research progress and funding, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Health Care
- Axios quoted Mark E. Miller, AV’s executive vice president of health care, in a story about how hospitals are in the hotseat for their billing practices.
- The New York Times covered a report authored by AV grantees about private equity ownership in health care. (free link)
- Also in the New York Times, an op-ed by a former emergency room physician that explains how unchecked hospital consolidation is proving costly for the American people. (free link)
- AV grantee Public Agenda released a report on employees’ perspectives on provider prices and the role their employers should be playing to address that issue.
- The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) published a brief outlining ways states can ensure high-quality care for long-term care facility residents, including dual-eligible individuals, and a brief highlighting recent state actions to ensure compliance with federal hospital and health plan price transparency rules.
- AV grantee Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published a blog post on Medicare Advantage overpayments and their role in advancing the insolvency of the Medicare trust fund.
- In an op-ed in The Hill, former congressman Henry Waxman discusses the importance of bipartisan support for policies aimed at lowering drug prices.
- Congress passed a bill to break up the Organ Procurement and Transportation Network (OPTN) monopoly and allow for competitive bidding, in the Washington Post. (free link)
Public Finance
- In Politico, Benjamin Guggenheim talks about the divisiveness of the 15% global tax, quoting AV’s Executive Vice President of Public Finance George Callas: “I still find it a surreal but inescapable conclusion that an American executive branch colluded with foreign governments to pressure the American legislative branch to raise taxes on American companies.”
Higher Education
- An op-ed in The Hechinger Report highlights the impressive results from CUNY ASAP in increasing graduation rates and workforce earnings and makes a case for scaling up the program.
- AV grantee Student Defense filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that Caltech falsely promoted its cybersecurity bootcamp as an institutional program, failing to disclose it was entirely run by Simplilearn Americas, a for-profit online bootcamp provider, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Democracy
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The Tradeoffs podcast tackles the process and future impact of Medicare’s drug pricing negotiations. The Inflation Reduction Act gave Medicare historic new power to directly negotiate the prices of some of the costliest prescription drugs. Now the federal agency must grapple with a difficult question: What makes a drug price fair?
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The National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research will be awarding more than $3 million in funding, provided by AV, to study extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs). Access the RFP here.
The Pretrial Justice team has released a request for proposals that will help inform and advance the field’s collective understanding of the policies and practices related to pretrial release decisions, pretrial release conditions, and pretrial services.
The Higher Education and Evidence-Based Policy teams have created a request for proposals for rigorous impact evaluations of programs and practices (“interventions”) to promote college success in the United States.
The Criminal Justice and Evidence-Based Policy teams at Arnold Ventures are teaming up to learn more about what works in criminal justice reform in an ongoing request for proposals for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that will test programs and practices. There is no deadline for submissions.
The Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy. Details are here.
View our RFPs here.
The Abstract will be published every other week until Labor Day.
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Torie
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Torie Ludwin produces the Abstract and other multimedia work, and covers communications for public finance and evidence-based policy at Arnold Ventures.
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