"Consumer-Driven Health Care Might Not Be What Patients Need -- Caveat Emptor," Journal of the American Medical Association: In the commentary, Robert Berenson of the Urban Institute and Christine Cassel of the American Board of Internal Medicine discuss consumer-directed health care plans designed to make consumers more selective in seeking services. While many see consumer-directed care as a "new approach to organizing the financing and delivery of health care," the model "implicitly calls for a fundamental reordering of the patient-physician relationship, placing increased reliance on commercial ethics while eroding professional ethics as the guiding force for patient-physician interactions," the authors write. Berenson and Cassel write that medical leaders "must embrace a new professionalism that obligates physicians to principles reflecting the primacy of patient welfare, patient autonomy and social justice" (Berenson/Cassel, JAMA, 1/21).

"Partial-Year Insurance Coverage and the Health Care Utilization of Children," Medical Care Research and Review: The study by Lindsey Leininger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison examines the effect of partial-year health coverage on children's health care utilization. The study finds that each incremental month a child is uninsured is associated with a 0.7 percentage point decline in the probability that the child will receive a physician visit over the course of a year and a 3% decrease in the number of physician visits received. According to the study, children with partial-year insurance coverage gaps are more likely than those with continuous coverage to lose their primary source of care (Leininger, Medical Care Research and Review, February 2009).

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