Inter-Governmental Health Care Partnerships: Promoting Innovation, Inefficiency or Stalemate?

Award Year: 2002	Investigator: Michael Sparer	Budget: $227,340	Categories: Government Agencies, Politics and Policymaking
Abstract: For more than 200 years, policymakers have struggled over how best to balance power and divide labor between the federal government and the states. Michael S. Sparer, J.D., Ph.D. is interested in intergovernmental partnerships and the potential they hold for creating innovative policy and programmatic responses to health and health care problems. His project, Inter-Governmental Health Care Partnerships: Promoting Innovation, Inefficiency, or Stalemate?, will assess the advantages and disadvantages of such partnerships and examine whether power-sharing by different levels of government encourages or deters innovation. Through three case studies, Dr. Sparer will take a close look at recent balance-of-power shifts in federal regulatory, fiscal, and public health policy. These include federal actions aimed at playing a greater role in patient protection, increasing the discretion of states over Medicaid policy and program design, and an expanded federal role in public health protection as a result of the terrorist acts on September 11.