Prof. Swartz's current research interests focus on the population without health insurance and efforts to increase access to health care coverage; reasons for and ways to control episodes of care that involve extremely-high expenditures; and how we might pay for expanded health insurance coverage.
Her new book -- Reinsuring Health: Why More Middle-Class People Are Uninsured and What Government Can Do -- was published by the Russell Sage Foundation and released in June. The book describes who does not have insurance today and why the middle-class are more likely to be uninsured today than 25 years ago, how insurance companies compete and why people have trouble obtaining health insurance, and why government-sponsored reinsurance for people with very-high expenditures would make small group and individual insurance more accessible and affordable for many of the uninsured. Her proposal about reinsurance is being discussed in a number of states as part of packages of policies they are considering to expand health insurance coverage.
Prof. Swartz also is interested in the impact of the mapping of the human genome and its implications for health insurance; in particular, what types of genetic illnesses and conditions will be no longer insurable by private insurance companies, and the role that government may have in providing financing of new genetic therapies and tests.
Since November 1995, Prof. Swartz has been the editor of Inquiry, a journal that focuses on health care organization, provision and financing. She was the 1991 recipient of the David Kershaw Award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management for research done before the age of 40 that has had a significant impact on public policy.
Prof. Swartz was a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. for ten years before joining the HSPH faculty. From September 2000 through June 2001, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.