Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Policy Analysis and the Politics of Health Policy: Scholarship, Knowledge Translation and Policymaking

(Impact of Politics on the Policy Process)

How, when, and where does academic policy analysis about the health care system enter the policymaking process? How have healthcare policymakers seen and used policy analysis in the development, implementation, and perhaps repeal of the Affordable Care Act? As the US moves from a more technocratic to a more populist administration, how is the role of policy analysis likely to shift? Many aspects of the Affordable Care Act’s development and implementation offered opportunities for scholarship to influence the process – from the initial decision to focus on health reform, to the design of the exchanges and the Medicaid expansion, to the investment in comparative effectiveness research and delivery system improvements, through the most recent repeal-and-replace debates. The Law’s path has wound through Congress, the Federal Executive Branch, the Courts, and through State Legislatures and Governor’s Offices. How, where, and when did policy-related scholarship play a part in these processes? How, where, and when should it have played such a part? This panel will explore these questions both positively and normatively.