News Releases

Under current law, physicians may choose to privately contract with their Medicare patients, though very few do.  Under such arrangements, doctors can charge their Medicare patients any amount they determine is appropriate for their services rather than be bound to Medicare’s set fees and balance billing limits, so long as…

A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of short-term, limited duration health plans for sale through two major national online brokers finds big gaps in the benefits they offer. Through an executive order and proposed new regulations, the Trump Administration is seeking to encourage broader use of short-term, limited duration health…

A new brief analyzes the Trump Administration’s proposed changes to federal anti-discrimination regulations that would eliminate existing protections in health care related to gender identity and access to abortion, and narrow protections for non-English speakers.

KFF is pleased to announce that Kaiser Health News (KHN), its editorially independent health news service, won a top prize in the 13th annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Journalism.

About half of emergency ground ambulance rides result in an out-of-network charge for people with private health insurance, potentially leaving patients at risk of getting a surprise bill, a new KFF analysis for the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker finds. Congress last year enacted the “No Surprises Act,” which prohibits most…

Few Americans realize that starting this year hospitals are required to post prices of common health services on their websites in a format patients can access and use, data from the KFF Health Tracking poll shows. Federal regulations that took effect January 1 require this price transparency for hospitals to…

Less than a week after a new federal mandate to cover such products took effect, about half of the nation’s largest private insurers allow enrollees to directly obtain rapid at-home COVID-19 tests from specific sources without having to pay anything upfront, a new KFF analysis finds. The new coverage requirement…

With federal agencies preparing to update parity regulations and Congress considering reforms, our new report explains existing parity requirements, including who they apply to and how their enforced, and highlights key policy issues raised by regulators and advocates that could be addressed in the future. Those issues include: Simplifying parity standards…

Since 2021, federal law has required hospitals to publicly post information about their standard prices and negotiated discount rates for common health services to encourage consumers to compare prices and to promote competition. To date, however, the transparency data currently shared by hospitals to comply with the law are messy,…

Most (58%) people with health insurance say they encountered at least one problem using their coverage in the past year, with even larger shares of people with the greatest health care needs reporting such problems, finds a new KFF survey of consumer experiences with health insurance. Such problems vary across…