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This post was updated to clarify that less than 10% of the nation's total health spending is spent on retail prescription drugs and does not include spending on drugs administrated by physicians or in hospitals.Prescription drug costs are a top concern for the American public.
The latest KFF Health Tracking Poll explores the public's views on the U.S. role in distributing COVID vaccines to other countries, health care priorities for Congress, prescription drug regulations and price negotiations, and affordability changes in the COVID-19 relief bill.
The Trump Administration could go in one of three directions with the Medicare negotiations program: stay the course, water it down or repeal it all together. There are potential tradeoffs with each, but the first would be most popular.
This interactive tool, updated with 2022 data, helps users understand health care costs vary by family size, income, insurance, and health status. Use the dropdown menus to explore scenarios and trends in household health spending.
These fact sheets lay out the health care landscape in every state, providing data on a variety of health care topics that may be the focus of policy debates in the 2024 election. Topics include health costs; women’s health policy, including state abortion, contraception and maternity laws and policies; health coverage, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and prescription drug coverage, Medicaid, and employer-sponsored insurance; gender affirming care; and basic information on health status, population and income.
As states completed the “unwinding” of pandemic-era continuous coverage, Medicaid enrollment fell 7.6% in FY 2025 and is expected to be largely flat in FY 2026. At the same time, total Medicaid spending grew by 8.6% in FY 2025 and is expected to grow by 7.9% in FY 2026.
On October 8, 2024, Vice President Harris has proposed to expand Medicare to provide home care to help families who are struggling with the costs of long-term care. If enacted, this would be the first major expansion of Medicare since the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 that added a prescription drug benefit to the program.
This brief estimates the number of current Marketplace enrollees with a mental health diagnosis to understand what changes in enrollment may mean for access to services. Among the 24.3 million Marketplace enrollees in 2025, over 4.4 million individuals are estimated to have at least one mental health diagnosis on a health care claim.
This data note analyzes health care expenditures for immigrants and U.S.-born people using data from the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey.
Affordable Care Act Marketplace insurers are raising premiums by an average of 18% next year, due in part to the expiring enhanced premium tax credits. Even if the credits are extended in shutdown negotiations, it is unlikely that insurers will have time to revise premiums, though the credits would still offer enrollees relief from them.
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