3,091-3,100 of 3,664 results

  • The Adequacy of Health Insurance

    Event Date:
    Event

    Testimony by Diane Rowland, executive vice president and executive director of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, at a congressional hearing, titled “Addressing Underinsurance in National Health Reform,” held Feb. 24, 2009, by a special task force of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Rowland discussed the status of health insurance coverage in America and the gaps and limits to coverage that leave millions of Americans poorly protected…

  • Snapshots from the Kitchen Table: Family Budgets and Health Care

    Video

    This Kaiser Family Foundation documentary, “Snapshots from the Kitchen Table: Family Budgets and Health Care,” profiles several American families who are struggling to make ends meet. It depicts the narrow financial ledge on which millions of low- and middle- income working households stand even in normal economic times, and illustrates the central role that health care costs and coverage play in a household’s economic stability. Some of the families profiled have health insurance, others do…

  • Making the Most of Medicaid: Promoting the Health of Women and Infants With Preconception Care

    Report

    This article examines the evolution and current role of Medicaid in improving access to preconception care for low-income women. It reviews Medicaid's eligibility policy and benefits of relevance to women of reproductive age, and discusses challenges facing the program. Authors Alina Salganicoff, vice president and director of women's health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Jane An, a research assistant at the Foundation, also examine potential opportunities to use the Medicaid program to promote…

  • Cost Sharing for Health Care: France, Germany, and Switzerland

    Issue Brief

    As policymakers in the United States weigh options for reform to the nation’s health care system, the level of cost sharing that consumers face when they receive services covered by their health plans is a major consideration, especially for those with serious health conditions. This background brief authored by Kaiser Family Foundation researchers examines how three European countries – France, Germany, and Switzerland – have dealt with cost sharing in their health systems. While cost…

  • Health Coverage and Access to Care Among Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders

    Fact Sheet

    A new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum examines the health coverage, access to health care, and health status of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander ethnic groups in the United States, and finds that certain subgroups are doing much worse than others in terms of health insurance coverage and access to health care. For example, Korean Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are about…

  • Vermont’s Choices for Care Medicaid Long-Term Services Waiver: Progress and Challenges As the Program Concluded Its Third Year

    Report

    Vermont's Choices for Care experiment in long-term services, created through a five-year Medicaid waiver in 2005, was designed to increase access to home and community-based services while reducing the use of institutional services and controlling overall costs. In exchange for agreeing to a federal funding cap, Vermont was able to expand access to community-based services and extend some services to a "moderate need" group for the first time to test the theory that early interventions…

  • The Fraying Link Between Work and Health Insurance: Trends in Employer-Sponsored Insurance for Employees, 2000-2007

    Report

    This analysis shows that employer-sponsored coverage began declining after 2000 due to an economic downturn that saw rising unemployment, declining family incomes and more workers moving into temporary work, part-time work and other employment arrangements where health benefits were not provided. Employer-sponsored coverage continued to decline after 2003 despite improvements in the economy and slower growth in health care costs. The decline in coverage was due both to falloffs in the share of employees with…

  • The Cost of Cancer

    Video

    This Kaiser Family Foundation documentary explores the financial consequences faced by three people, all privately insured, after being diagnosed with cancer. It was released in conjunction with a joint Kaiser/American Cancer Society report, "Spending To Survive: Cancer Patients Confront Holes in the Health Insurance System." The Cost of Cancer: Tom Olszewski Tom Olszewski, a retiree who lives in Texas, had prostate cancer but has been in remission for a decade. His medical history made it…

  • Emerging Health Information Technology for Children in Medicaid and SCHIP Programs

    Report

    This report highlights states' innovative use of health information technology in their Medicaid and SCHIP programs to improve their ability to reach and enroll eligible children, improve the quality of care for children, increase communications with families, and continue to modernize their programs. Although many of these efforts are still in their early stages, findings to date indicate improvements in access to care, care coordination, case management, and administrative efficiency. States are pursuing ways to…

  • Pulling It Together: Keeping the Health Reform Coalition Together

    Perspective

    We could be headed for a new schism in the debate about health reform. Not the familiar gulf between advocates of the market and government, or the predictable one between deficit hawks and spenders, but a new one that crosses traditional partisan and ideological lines between advocates of long-term reform of the health care delivery system, and immediate help for the uninsured and insured struggling with health care costs.  This new rift is most likely to develop if tight money and a crowded agenda…