In February 2018, the Baker Institute, the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York held a two-day conference in Beirut to examine critical challenges and effective policy options for fostering more inclusive and pluralistic systems in the MENA. Leading experts discussed issues such as post-conflict reconstruction and the economic, political, and socio-religious dimensions of pluralism and inclusion in the MENA. This report summarizes some of the participants' discussions and proposals.
Rising health care costs and generational attitudes toward convenience and the ability to personalize life choices are driving a trend toward greater individual responsibility over the use of health care services.
Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior estimates there could be 430,000 to 600,000 children and youth who are U.S. citizens but now reside in Mexico. Without the necessary documents, they become a vulnerable population without proper access to schools or social and health services. This brief explores the issues related to this population and calls for more research to be done to understand its impact.
A study comparing the community benefit expenditures of two sets of Houston hospitals leads the authors to propose strategies that can better justify the tax exemptions the institutions enjoy.
Alex Alexander, Marah Short, Vivian HoFebruary 8, 2018
Vivian Ho, director of the Center for Health and Biosciences, examines some of the major reasons critics dislike the Affordable Care Act and offers policy recommendations for refining the legislation in the Annual Review of Medicine.
In the December 2017 issue of the Health Policy Research newsletter, Michael Kauth, director of the Veterans Health Administration’s LGBT Health Program, explains why it is important for physicians to ask patients about the sexual orientation and gender identity as a part of providing quality patient care.
Many argue that sales and excise taxes are regressive based on the strict relationship between annual income and taxes paid, but the burden of higher sales taxes may actually fall more heavily on households with higher lifetime incomes.
In early 2017, Mayor Sylvester Turner appointed Baker Institute fellow Quianta Moore to his newly created Task Force on Equity, which was charged with developing actionable policy recommendations to make Houston a more equitable place to live.