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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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“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.

Are the Tradeoffs of Prior Authorization Worth It? 

In his latest column, President and CEO Dr. Drew Altman asks if prior authorization review could be eliminated entirely, discussing how it might be done and the tradeoffs. "Nothing makes American health care consumers more frustrated using the health system than prior authorization review," he writes.

View All Beyond the Data Columns

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  • Covering The ACA May Be Almost As Hard As Implementing It

    From Drew Altman

    This Pulling It Together was adapted from a column I published earlier this week in Politico, with a new introduction added. You can read the original Politico column here. The implementation of the ACA is news and the public will demand information about it. Journalists and news organizations have an obligation to cover this story.

  • Poor People Have the Same Needs as Others

    From Drew Altman

    Drew Altman, President and CEO of the Foundation, was asked to contribute to the New York Times' Room for Debate discussion on More Medicaid, More Health? In his piece, Dr. Altman concludes "Insurance -- public or private -- provides financial protection and access to medical care which low-income people need just as everybody else does. But it cannot by itself change behavior, alleviate poverty, or guarantee that the medical system is doing all it can to improve health."

  • Can We Learn From ACA Implementation and Improve the Law?

    From Drew Altman

    Senator Baucus made headlines recently when he predicted a “train wreck” for Obamacare. David Brooks predicted “chaos” in a recent column. In a news conference, the President offered a different perspective.  “There’ll still be, you know, glitches and bumps…. That’s pretty much true of every government program that’s ever been set up,” Obama said.

  • We Still Have a Health-Care Spending Problem

    From Drew Altman

    Drew Altman, President and CEO of the Foundation, and Larry Levitt, Senior Vice President, co-authored a Washington Post op-ed that examined how the economy affects the nation’s health spending.

  • Questions for 2014

    From Drew Altman

    Today’s discussion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is focused on immediate implementation milestones leading up to 2014 when the law’s major provisions are set to kick in.

  • The News Media and “Entitlement Reform”

    From Drew Altman

    In the coming debate about the deficit, policymakers will struggle to craft a package of spending reductions and new revenues that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on, totaling as much as four trillion dollars over ten years.

  • Pulling it Together: How the ACA Can Help The Homeless

    From Drew Altman

    Estimates are that there are approximately 630,000 people who are homeless on any given night in the U.S. -- about two-thirds in shelters and one-third on the street or without real shelter. Several million people are estimated to experience homelessness over the course of a year. About two-thirds are individuals and the balance are in families.