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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.”

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Beyond the Data

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

Drew Altman, KFF President and CEP is quoted on this card saying, "People are bewildered by a supercharged and polarized debate about vaccines and no longer know where to turn for scientific information they can rely on ... The vaccines are not the culprit—we and the state of our politics and the distrust in science and our scientific institutions they breed are."

The Problem Isn’t Trust in Vaccines, It’s That People Don’t Know Who to Trust

In a new “Beyond the Data” column, Dr. Altman analyzes years of KFF polling on vaccines in light of the current controversies about them. The real problem, he says, is not lack of public confidence in the safety of vaccines — few say they are unsafe — it’s that polarization and misinformation have eroded confidence in what’s true or not, and in scientific institutions people used to rely on for the facts.

View All Beyond the Data Columns

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  • In Employer Health Insurance Costs, Stability Is the New Normal

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman looks at the sharply slower growth in premiums for employer health benefits and what it might mean for the future of employer-sponsored coverage.

  • A Perilous Gap in Health Insurance Literacy

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses how progress in expanding coverage requires greater attention to the problem of health insurance literacy.

  • Sen. Mark Pryor Spotlights the Health Law’s Rx for Pre-Existing Illnesses

    From Drew Altman

    In a column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman explains why Senator Mark Pryor’s new campaign ad features the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, the somewhat forgotten “mega provision” of the law.

  • How Obamacare Is Doing Better But Feeling Worse

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman explains why even as there are recent positive indicators of the Affordable Care Act’s performance and impact, public opinion about the law has not changed since passage of the law.

  • A Closer Look at the Courts’ Impact on Health Policy

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman maps what the combined impact of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and a plaintiff’s win in Halbig would look like and discusses the impact of court decisions on health policy.

  • 3 Takeaways From the Medicare Trustees Report

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman dives into this week’s release of the Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report to discuss the good news that may have been missed.

  • Amid Tensions, Legal Immigrants Fear Signing Up for Obamacare

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses new Kaiser Family Foundation survey findings about how fear of enforcement of immigration laws may be affecting Latino enrollment in the Affordable Care Act.

  • The Stakes Beyond the Halbig Lawsuit

    From Drew Altman

    In a column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman discusses if the legal court cases about whether the government can provide tax credits to people in the Affordable Care Act’s federal health exchanges will be perceived by the American people as a legitimate legal question or as more inside-Washington politics.

  • How Obamacare’s Progress Makes Expanding Coverage Harder

    From Drew Altman

    This was published as a Wall Street Journal Think Tank column on July 21, 2014. The Affordable Care Act’s success meeting its initial enrollment goals and the repair of HealthCare.gov seem to have calmed the political waters for Obamacare.