In this column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman explores whether Secretary Burwell’s announcement this week about Medicare’s payment reform initiative is another sign that the public sector is becoming the engine driving payment and delivery reform.

This Visualizing Health Policy infographic provides an overview of Medicare spending, including information on current federal spending relative to other government programs (e.g., Social Security) and percent-share of spending across Medicare services, as well as projected Medicare spending over the next decade and beyond. Recent federal spending on Medicare is…

After more than three years of political controversy and legal challenges, the major coverage provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act are set to take effect January 1 — yet polling finds roughly half of Americans say they don’t know enough about the health reform law to understand how it will affect their families. With new state health insurance marketplaces set to enroll people in coverage starting October 1, local and national print, online, television and radio news outlets will play a critical role in educating their audiences about the law’s new realities.

As part of its Media Fellowships Program, the Kaiser Family Foundation presents a series of free, interactive web briefings exclusively for journalists to address key aspects of the the Affordable Care Act, its implications for consumers, and strategies for connecting the dots for different audiences.

Medicare, the federal health program that provides health care and coverage to 54 million seniors and younger adults with permanent disabilities, is in the midst of an unprecedented slowdown in spending growth.  A new issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation, How Much of the Medicare Spending Slowdown Can be…

In this column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman explains how Republican control of Congress will likely bring challenges to the Affordable Care Act in two flavors.

Republican Ads Were Much More Likely to Mention ACA, Often in Spots that Also Hit Other Issues About 14 percent of political ads in all races airing this year through October 15 mention the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare or any of the law’s specific provisions, mostly in a negative way,…

With Medicare’s 2015 open enrollment set to begin Oct. 15, two new analyses from the Kaiser Family Foundation find modest change in the total number of private Medicare Advantage plans available for 2015, and the fewest Part D prescription drug plans nationwide since the start of the drug benefit in 2006. As in previous years, changes in Medicare Advantage and Part D plan availability, premiums, cost-sharing and benefits could require some beneficiaries to find alternative coverage and lead others to pay more if they continue with their existing coverage.

This policy insight examines the unexpected drop in Medicare’s per-beneficiary spending projections and its implications for beneficiaries and the program’s future.

This Visualizing Health Policy infographic provides a snapshot of the role of Medicare Advantage plans, an alternative to traditional Medicare, including information about the proportion of Medicare beneficiaries who are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, geographic differences in Medicare Advantage penetration, the trend of increasing enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans,…

The latest Kaiser Health Policy News Index finds that attention to health policy stories in August took a back seat to breaking national news such as the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, international events in the West Bank, Syria and Ukraine and a global health story, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The only U.S. health policy news story that garnered a significant amount of public attention this month was the passage of a bill in Congress to overhaul the Veterans Affairs health system.