3,091-3,100 of 3,661 results

  • 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…

  • Eliminating Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health Care: What are the Options?

    Issue Brief

     Download PDF Racial and ethnic disparities in health care – whether in insurance coverage, access, or quality of care – are one of many factors producing inequalities in health status in the United States.1  Eliminating these disparities is politically sensitive and challenging in part because their causes are intertwined with a contentious history of race relations in America. Nonetheless, assuring greater equity and accountability of the health care system is important to a growing constituency…

  • Women’s Health and Election 2008

    Issue Brief

     Download PDF Women consistently cite health care as one of the top issues they want the Presidential candidates to address, reflecting their experiences with the health care system as patients, mothers, and caregivers for frail and disabled family members.  Women’s priorities for health care reform cut across many critical topics, including health insurance coverage and affordability, the cornerstones of the candidates’ health proposals, as well as long-term care, delivery system issues, and reproductive health.  This…

  • Voters and Health Reform in the 2008 Presidential Election

    Poll Finding

    This analysis, published in the November 6, 2008, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), finds that seven in ten registered voters say major changes are needed in the U.S. health care system. The article is the second in a series of reports published in NEJM examining how the election can provide insights about future health policy. The article examines the public’s perceptions of the state of the American health care system, the role of health…