Abstract
It is hard to believe that seven years have passed since I became the editor of INQUIRY. During this time, we have witnessed some breathtaking changes—both positive and negative—in the American political, economic, and health care landscapes, which made editing INQUIRY both exciting and challenging. Prominent among these events were the election and re-election of our first African-American president; the near-implosion of our financial system culminating in the Great Recession; a growing awareness of income inequality, the perilous economic circumstances faced by many American families, and the uncertain economic prospects faced by young adults; the implementation of health reform in Massachusetts; and the passage and implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to name a few. For a few years, we even had the tantalizing prospect that the decline in the growth of health care spending might be permanent, only to face the reality of a recent upward surge in spending growth as the economy gained some steam.
At the same time, we witnessed the growing contentiousness in our politics and its increasing dominance by entrenched ideological and moneyed interests. Such dominance has virtually paralyzed our political process, making it unable to respond to our pressing social and fiscal needs. Needless to say, the stalemate in our politics has left many of us deeply dissatisfied with the performance of all levels of government.
I am quite pleased that INQUIRY was able to respond to the changing health care and economic environments through our regular peer-reviewed articles, in our special issues devoted to national health reform, bending the cost curve, and findings from Massachusetts health reform, as well as through my column, The View from Here, which appeared in each issue.
In the last year, INQUIRY has attained an important milestone and undergone a very significant change as well. First, INQUIRY has completed its 50th year of publication, a striking accomplishment that should be a source of pride for all of us associated with the journal. Readers may not be aware that for much of INQUIRY’s history (the forty-year period between 1971 and 2011), INQUIRY was ranked number eight among all health economics journals. Next, after a long association with Excellus Health Plan of Rochester, New York, INQUIRY now is being published by SAGE Publications. The shift from Excellus to SAGE marks a big change in INQUIRY’s publication format. Beginning with volume 51, INQUIRY will be an online-only, open access journal, and as such, will significantly expand reader access to its timely and important research. INQUIRY will continue to remain peer-reviewed, and I encourage you to go to its new website (http://inq.sagepub.com/) to learn more about its new format.
These changes also coincide with a shift in my own association with INQUIRY: With the completion of this volume, I will be stepping down as editor (although I will remain an editorial board member). With INQUIRY’s continuity now secure, and with its move to a new publisher and format, it seems like a logical time to turn my responsibilities over to someone new. I am proud of what we accomplished during my time as editor, and I certainly wish INQUIRY and its new staff best wishes for its future success.
I have very much enjoyed my tenure as editor. It has provided me with the experience of being on “the other side” of the peer-review process and given me the chance to have my own “soapbox,” The View from Here, to express my views on various health and public policy issues. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity and for the occasional feedback from those of you who took the time to read through my opinion pieces. I also want to express my profound thanks to our referees for their careful and thoughtful reviews and recommendations regarding submissions. I have learned much from them about policy issues and empirical methods. I also want to thank our authors for sticking with us, especially during INQUIRY’s transition period, and for their patience during those times when my academic and other responsibilities precluded a timely assessment of manuscripts.
There are several individuals associated with INQUIRY to whom I owe special thanks. First, I want to thank Kevin Kane, INQUIRY’s former editor-in-chief at Excellus Health Plan, and Shelley Andrews, senior acquisitions editor at SAGE, for their persistence and patience in reaching the contractual agreement that transferred INQUIRY to SAGE and has assured its continuity. We can now safely say happy 50th birthday to INQUIRY with the confidence that there will be many happy returns. I also want to note that Kevin played a key role in seeking ways to maintain INQUIRY’s presence during a period when the business of publishing an academic journal faced significant challenges. I also am grateful to Kathy Swartz, INQUIRY’s former editor, for recommending me as her successor, and to former Excellus CEO David Klein and INQUIRY’s publisher, Howard Berman, for agreeing to hire me. I am especially grateful to David and Howard for their continued confidence in my efforts and for my editorial freedom. I want to extend a special thank-you to Ronny Frishman, INQUIRY’s former managing editor for her devotion to INQUIRY, her editorial acumen, her diligent tracking of INQUIRY’s progress, and for her comments and insights regarding my quarterly columns. As I have previously noted, working with Ronny has been a real treat and she, perhaps above all others, was the driving force behind INQUIRY’s editorial integrity. Finally, I also want to acknowledge the contributions of Patrice Mitchell who served as INQUIRY’s proofreader and copyeditor for the last two decades.
Finally, I owe a special debt to my long-standing colleague Jessica Vistnes, an editorial board member and senior economist at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, for her willingness to read through my columns with a very critical eye and to provide an honest (and sometimes painful) assessment of the points I tried to make. Jessica was quite willing to let me know when my narrative was not tightly or logically constructed, when the implications and conclusions reached were not adequately supported by my argument or by the facts at hand, and when my frank assertions might be offensive to some. For these contributions and for her willingness more generally to be a sounding board for my columns, I am exceedingly grateful. Finally, a huge thank-you goes to my wife Maddy for her willingness to put up with me as I read through papers, referee comments, and drafted my columns. Her attempts to edit my prose, insistence that I write my columns with the non-specialist in mind, and efforts to limit the length of my paragraph-long sentences often fell on deaf ears despite the fact that I knew she was usually correct.
In closing, I want to wish INQUIRY and SAGE much success in their future publishing endeavors. I also want to encourage you to support INQUIRY as it moves to its new format and as a new editor assumes responsibility for its content. INQUIRY has been widely recognized as attaining an important niche among health policy, health economics, and health services research journals, and it is my sincere hope that it will grow and thrive under its new publisher. I look forward to INQUIRY’s future efforts as we move to a new and exciting era in health services delivery and health care policy.