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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 four major program areas: KFF Policy; KFF Polling; KFF Health News (formerly Kaiser Health News); and KFF Social Impact Media, 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.

The New Ideas Conundrum in Health Policy

In a new column, President and CEO Dr. Drew Altman writes about the “conundrum of health policy ideas” facing Democrats searching for new proposals because of competing, and complex, priorities: rebuilding Medicaid and the ACA after trillion-dollar cuts, reconstructing federal health agencies, and tackling underlying health care costs, when candidates want simple ideas they can campaign on and voters want their costs to come down.

View All Beyond the Data Columns

View the Latest: From Drew Altman

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  • Americans’ Health Priorities Diverge From Washington’s Focus on Obamacare

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman finds the public’s healthcare priorities have more to do with drug costs and other real world issues people deal with using the health care system than the ongoing partisan wrangling over the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

  • Why Low Growth in Health Costs Still Stings

    From Drew Altman

    This was published as a Wall Street Journal Think Tank column on April 8, 2015. In my last Think Tank piece, I reported that just 3% of Americans felt health costs had been rising more slowly than usual, even though they have been growing at record low rates in recent years.

  • Americans Don’t Feel the Slowdown in Health Costs

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses why the health policy agenda may shift to focus more on affordability of coverage, consumer protection and consumer information in coming years.

  • Health-Care Deductibles Climbing Out of Reach

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman explores the trend of higher deductibles in health plans and discusses a new analysis showing that many people with private insurance don’t have sufficient financial resources to pay a mid- or high-range deductible.