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Just over 35 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage in February 2026, an increase of 1.1 million since a year ago. The increase was largely driven by increased enrollment in special needs plans.
This brief looks at premium changes for Medicare Part D stand-alone prescription drug plans between 2025 and 2026. For plans that were offered nationwide in 2025 and will continue to be offered in 2026, Part D enrollees in many states will see lower monthly premiums in 2026.
Extending the short-term GLP-1 Bridge program is good news for eligible Medicare beneficiaries because it provides the certainty of obesity drug coverage at a $50 copay for a longer duration, but federal spending will also rise by some unknown amount since CMS hasn’t disclosed the projected cost.
The U.S. spends more on health care than other large, wealthy countries. Concerns about rising costs aren't new, yet somehow we keep paying the bill. In this video, KFF’s Larry Levitt explains how we got here, who bears the consequences and why reining in spending systematically may be central to the next big health care debate. KFF’s Larry Levitt, Executive Vice President for Health Policy, explains how we got here, who bears the consequences and…
This brief provides an overview of key trends in Medicare spending and spending growth, as well as the impact of these trends on out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries and Medicare program solvency, as projected by the Medicare Trustees in the 2026 Trustees Report.
Without these extra subsidies in place for 2027, some Part D stand-alone drug plan (PDP) enrollees could see a larger premium increase for drug coverage next year than they’ve faced in recent years, though plan-specific premium amounts are not yet known. While some policymakers questioned the rationale for and cost of the premium stabilization demonstration, which totaled $9.8 billion in 2025 and 2026, the extra subsidies worked as intended to stabilize year-over-year PDP premium increases…
This brief uses 2021 Medicaid claims data to examine utilization among Medicaid expansion adults and estimate how much cost sharing these enrollees could be required to pay under the new requirement if all states imposed the maximum cost sharing amounts. This is an illustrative analysis intended to describe which enrollees may be subject to the most cost sharing under the new provisions rather than estimate exactly what expansion enrollees may actually pay.
The Build Back Better Act includes several provisions that would lower prescription drug costs for people with Medicare and private insurance and reduce drug spending by the federal government and private payers. This brief summarizes these provisions and discusses the expected effects on people, program spending, and drug prices and innovation.
Drug makers sometimes offer copay coupons to lower consumers’ out-of-pocket costs for their brand-name prescriptions, though how private health plans treat those coupons can substantially limit their value to consumers. This issue brief provides an overview of such copay adjustment programs, stakeholder arguments for and against their use, their prevalence, and federal and state efforts to address them.
This Health Policy 101 chapter explores the performance of the U.S. health system on a number of cost, outcomes, and quality measures by comparing it with those in similarly large and wealthy OECD nations. It highlights that despite significant spending, Americans have shorter life expectancies and encounter more barriers to health care, influenced by both the health system's structure and broader socioeconomic factors.
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