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.

“…voters’ concerns about health care costs are having a moment, and will continue to do so through 2028, because voters see them as a dimension of their worries about the cost of living, which is their dominant concern right now.” — Drew Altman, KFF Founding President and CEO

A Guide to the Role of Health in the Midterms

In a new column, President and CEO Dr. Drew Altman says health care costs are playing a significant role in the midterms as one dimension of voters’ concerns about cost of living, and explains why pollsters, analysts, and candidates should look at it that way, and not as a separate voting issue. He writes, “The ‘issue’ that matters most in this election is cost of living and the cost of health care is a central element of it for voters.”

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  • In Wake of Dallas, Minnesota and Baton Rouge Shootings, an Opening for Local Leaders

    From Drew Altman

    In this The Wall Street Journal Think Tank column, Drew Altman discusses how incidents in Dallas, Baton Rouge and Minnesota create opportunities for local leaders to take steps to reduce police-involved violence, citing data from the KFF-CNN survey of Americans on Race and KFF-New York Times Survey of Chicago Residents.

  • The Next Big Debate in Health Care

    From Drew Altman

    In this Wall Street Journal Think Tank column, Drew Altman discusses why adequacy of health coverage will rise as an issue when the political world moves on from its focus on the Affordable Care Act.

  • Two Studies Draw Different Conclusions on State of Black America

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses how studies with conflicting views of progress and problems for African Americans can both be true, and why African Americans may feel the problems more than the progress.

  • Partisanship’s Grip On The Affordable Care Act

    From Drew Altman

    In this Wall Street Journal's Think Tank column Drew Altman analyzes data from an upcoming Kaiser poll and discusses how partisanship is the dominant factor shaping views of the Affordable Care Act for Republicans and Democrats enrolled in marketplace plans.

  • Clinton-Sanders Contest Fuels Democratic Support for Expanding Obamacare

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses how the debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders about how to get to universal coverage has generated more support among Democrats for expanding the Affordable Care Act (and less support for the law as is).

  • Obamacare? Zika? Which Health Stories Americans Actually Follow

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman analyzes the Kaiser Health Policy News Index to determine which health stories in the news have broken through to the public the most in the last year. One conclusion: it wasn't the Affordable Care Act.