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From Drew Altman

Drew Altman is president and chief executive officer of KFF, a position he has held for more than 30 years since founding the modern-day KFF organization in the 1990s. He is a leading expert on national health policy issues and an innovator in health journalism and the nonprofit field.

View full bio | Read Dr. Altman's Beyond the Data columns

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President’s Message

“KFF is an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. We have three major program areas: KFF Policy; KFF Polling; and KFF Health News (formerly Kaiser Health News), which conducts specialized public health information campaigns. Learn more about the organization. 

What’s unique about KFF, however, can’t be found in any description of our programs because we’re more than a sum of our parts. KFF is a one-of-a-kind information organization. Not a policy research organization. Not a polling organization. And not a news organization. But rather, a unique combination of all three. That’s the vision behind KFF, and it's this combination that allows us to leverage our combined expertise and assets to play our national role on health policy.” Read more

Beyond the Data

In his “Beyond the Data” columns, Drew Altman discusses what the data, polls, and journalism produced by KFF mean for policy and for people.

BTD column on New Mexico

Doing More and Defying Labels in New Mexico

In a new column, Dr. Drew Altman, KFF’s Founding President and CEO, discusses how New Mexico made childcare universal and became the only state to fully replace lost enhanced ACA tax credits while its leaders avoided polarizing labels like “progressive or “socialist.”

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  • The Public Wants the Federal Government, Not States, in Charge On Coronavirus

    From Drew Altman

    Drew Altman’s column today analyzes new polling showing that rather than serving as backup to the states, the public wants the federal government to lead the nation’s coronavirus response. He writes, “The public seems to believe that in a health crisis of this magnitude, with a virus that doesn’t stop at state or international borders and the death toll mounting, a more uniform and aggressive national response is needed.”

  • Why the U.S. Doesn’t Have More Hospital Beds

    From Drew Altman

    With much of the news focused on the surge capacity of the nation’s hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, Drew Altman’s Axios column today examines why the nation has a shortage of hospital beds and what can be done about it. He writes, “It’s a result of past policies aimed at reducing hospital beds to control costs," he writes. "If we want to have surge capacity of hospital beds and equipment in place for the next crisis,…

  • Why the U.S. Doesn’t Have More Hospital Beds

    From Drew Altman

    With much of the news focused on the surge capacity of the nation’s hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, Drew Altman’s Axios column examines why the nation has a shortage of hospital beds and what can be done about it.

  • Even Supporters May Not Understand Medicare-for-All

    From Drew Altman

    In this Axios column, Drew Altman shows that the majority of supporters don’t know how Medicare-for-all works, with both positive and negative implications for support if they knew more.

  • Republican Voters Have Moved On from Hating the ACA

    From Drew Altman

    In this Axios column, Drew Altman analyzes KFF’s tracking poll and shows that the ACA is now yesterday’s issue for Republicans. They have shifted their sights to Medicare-for-all...at least for this election season.

  • What Iowa and New Hampshire tell us about Medicare-for-All

    From Drew Altman

    In this Axios column, Drew Altman analyzes data from the New Hampshire exit poll showing that support for Medicare-for-all played a role in the primary while broader support for a more moderate plan may be a signal about the general election.

  • Self-insured Companies Do No Better on Cost Control

    From Drew Altman

    A data surprise? Drew Altman, in his latest Axios column, shows there is no difference between large self-insured and fully insured companies when it comes to controlling health care costs, bucking conventional wisdom.

  • The ACA is Doing Fine Without a Mandate Penalty

    From Drew Altman

    In an Axios column, Drew Altman explains that the elimination of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty has had little impact on how the ACA’s insurance markets are working, showing that “the marketplaces continue to function, even when 'severed' from the mandate penalty,” and undercutting a central argument in the lawsuit seeking to strike down the entire law.