Brookings Today, 2/2/15

A roundup of some of the content published today at Brookings.

• Preserving Ukraine’s independence. Steven Pifer, Strobe Talbott, and other experts argue for greater U.S. leadership in ending the conflict in Ukraine and Russian involvement in the region.
• Medicare physician payment reform and the SGR. Keith Fontenot, Caitlin Brandt, and Mark McClellan offer a primer on Medicare’s “Sustainable Growth Rate” (SGR), a key target or Medicare physician reform payment.
• Cost of education testing. Matt Chingos argues that “spending on testing is barely a drop in the bucket of a public education system that spends over $600 billion per year.”
• Obama’s precision medicine initiative. Greg Daniel and Morgan Romine comment on why Obama’s announcement of a $215 million investment for personalized medicine programs is important.
• Target malware kingpins. Richard Bejtlich explains why governments should equip and authorize their law enforcement communities to target and mitigate criminal malware writers.
• Russian nukes in Crimea? Steven Pifer offers recommendations on how the U.S. should respond to the possible deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Crimea.
• How Americans see the Middle East. Shibley Telhami and Katayoun Kishi discuss their polling data on how Americans view issues in Middle East policy.