National Health Reform Law and Policy Project
User's Guide to Available Materials
Taxonomy »
The taxonomy is a tool that enables readers to compare major pieces of health reform legislation. Its goal is to provide a consistent understanding of the content of each legislative proposal and allow for relevant comparisons across provisions.
The taxonomy begins with a description of three basic approaches to health insurance reform. It is then organized as a series of domains that address the key questions and themes related to coverage access, affordability, quality, and financing that may apply independent of the overall approach. There are ten domains total including:
- Health Insurance Accessibility and Affordability
- Choice of Coverage, Enrollment, and Marketing
- Health Insurance Coverage and Access to High Quality Covered Treatments and Services
- Consumer Protections
- Treatment of Populations and Communities at Risk of Disparities in Health and Health Care
- Treatment of Other Forms of Health Insurance and Health Care Arrangements
- Integration with Public Health and Public Health Interventions
- Administering the New System and Ensuring Accountability
- Improving Quality and Efficiency of the Health Care System
- Paying for Health Reform
Beneath each domain is a series of related sub-domains that address key issues that are relevant to the specific domain. For example, under the first domain, "Health Insurance Accessibility and Affordability," the sub-domains include pre-existing exclusions, age and gender, and health status.
Using the taxonomy as a guide, GW faculty and staff have analyzed and organized the provisions of each of the major health care reform proposals. The provisions of the various proposals are presented in a table format and catalogued by taxonomy domains and subdomains identified along the far left hand side of each table. The proposals in table format may be viewed independently or comparatively (one or more proposals side by side) by all domains or a single domain.
Readers may choose to view all of the domains for all of the proposals (a comprehensive side by side table) or the proposals organized by the domains in the taxonomy may be viewed independently (see "Comparative Legislative Tables" below.)
Comparative Legislative Tables »
Readers may access the comparative legislative tables in a manner that best meet their needs and interests. For readers interested in a single proposal (e.g., The Healthy Americans Act (S.391) (Wyden)), each proposal may be viewed independently in its entirety organized according to the entire taxonomy or by specific taxonomy domain topic (e.g., Wyden, Domain 2). For readers interested in a particular domain across multiple proposals (e.g., domain number 2), the proposals may be viewed comparatively (side by side) (e.g., all proposals, Domain 2). Finally, for those readers interested in all proposals and all domains, a comprehensive analytical and comparative legislative table is available (e.g., All Proposals, All Domains). In addition, each table includes links to the relevant legislative text.
The following are a series of examples to illustrate how the analytical and comparative legislative tables are organized.
- Readers interested in viewing the entire taxonomy applied to all proposals can select "All Proposals," then select "All Domains."
- Readers interested in viewing the entire taxonomy applied to the Healthy Americans Act (Wyden), can select "Healthy Americans Act," then select "All Domains."
- Readers interested in viewing the enrollment provisions of all of the proposals, can select "All Proposals," then select "Domain 2."
- Readers interested in viewing the enrollment provisions of the Healthy Americans Act (Wyden), can select "Healthy American Act," then select "Domain 2."
Proposal Summaries »
On this page, readers will find comprehensive summaries of the key provisions of the major health reform legislative proposals, respectively. In addition, readers also will find a link to the status of the proposal on the www.thomas.gov website.
