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This brief explains fraud, waste, abuse, and improper payments in Medicare and describes actions to ensure Medicare program integrity.

Program integrity efforts work to prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse, to increase program transparency and accountability, and to recover improperly used funds. This brief explains what is known about improper payments and fraud and abuse in Medicaid and describes ongoing state and federal actions to address program integrity.

This analysis looks at the individual market enrollees who make at least four times the federal poverty level who would no longer be eligible for any tax credits if the current ACA Marketplace enhanced subsidies expire at the end of this year. Compared to other people with similar incomes, these enrollees are more likely to be early retirees, self-employed and living in rural areas.

According to the Washington Post, at least 390,000 students were exposed to a school shooting (exposure is defined as students attending a school at which a shooting occurred during the current school year) since the 1999 Columbine shooting. This brief analyzes the rate of student exposure to school shootings over time at the national and state level. Exposure rates depend on factors including school enrollment size and state population size. Therefore, even a single school shooting incident in a state can impact many youths beyond those that are physically injured and may significantly increase exposure rates.

This brief explores data about rural hospitals’ financial health and stability at a time when Congress is considering potential federal budget cuts. It examines the prevalence of rural hospitals, their characteristics and finances, federal support for these facilities, and the potential impact of reductions in Medicaid and Medicare spending that are under consideration.

There were gains in coverage across most racial and ethnic groups between 2019 and 2023 after several years of rising uninsured rates during the first Trump administration. The coverage gains between 2019 and 2023 were largely driven by increases in Medicaid coverage, reflecting policies to stabilize and expand access to affordable coverage that were implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This data note presents findings from the KFF Women’s Health Survey on women’s health status, access to health care services, and use of preventive health services.

This brief discusses how consumers understand what their insurance covers, what to do when coverage for care is denied, and what protections exist to ensure that information is available and coverage determinations are fair, accurate, and timely.

This Policy Watch reviews the key provisions of President Trump’s Executive Order that aim to restrict youth access to gender affirming care and examines state and legal responses.

Abby Sachar is a research associate for the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the Program on Medicare Policy. She conducts research on issues affecting individuals who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. Previously, she was a data and policy analyst at Acumen, LLC, where she processed and…