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Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker

The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker is an online hub monitoring how well the U.S. health system is operating through key quality and cost measures. A partnership of the Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF, the Tracker documents trends in Health Spending, Quality of Care, Access & Affordability, and Health & Wellbeing through issue briefs and downloadable chart collections. The Tracker also includes the Interactive Health Spending Explorer tool, which helps users analyze more than 50 years of health expenditure data, and a Health System Dashboard, which provides quick and easy access to the latest, most relevant statistics.

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  • How Does Cost Affect Access to Care?

    Feature

    This slideshow examines how cost and insurance affects people's access to care, including decisions to forgo or delay needed care and access to a usual source of care.

  • How Has the Quality of the U.S. Health Care System Changed Over Time?

    Issue Brief

    This chart collection examines five types of indicators: outcomes of treatment, provision of appropriate treatment, patient safety, preventive services, and health system capacity and workforce shortages. Measuring quality in health care is complex: a vast number of metrics are used to monitor health system performance since there is no singular definition of quality, and data is often limited and delayed.

  • Challenges with Effective Price Transparency Analyses

    Issue Brief

    Promoting price transparency in health care is a policy approach with bi-partisan support in Congress and the public at large. This analysis examines the vast troves of price transparency data that payers are required and finds unlikely prices, inconsistencies, and other oddities that pose major challenges for efforts to use it to promote competition and drive down prices.

  • What Drives Differences in Life Expectancy between the U.S. and Comparable Countries?

    Issue Brief

    This analysis compares 2021 data about deaths in the U.S. and 11 other large, wealthy countries by age and cause to understand the primary drivers of the longevity gap between the U.S. and the comparable countries. It finds that the primary reasons for the gap in 2021 were chronic disease, COVID-19 and substance use disorders.

  • How Does U.S. Life Expectancy Compare to Other Countries?

    Feature

    This chart collection examines how life expectancy in the U.S. compares to that of other similarly large and wealthy countries. Between 2019 and 2022, the U.S. experienced a sharper decline and a slower rebound in life expectancy than peer countries, on average, due to increased mortality and premature death rates in the U.S. from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, life expectancy in the U.S. returned to pre-pandemic levels, but remains lower than that of comparable countries.

  • How has U.S. Spending on Health Care Changed Over Time?

    Feature

    This slideshow examines trends in U.S. health spending over time, including the share of household budgets devoted to health expenses and comparisons of out-of-pocket expenditures to money spent on insurance through 2021.

  • National Health Spending Explorer

    Interactive

    The Health Spending Explorer on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker helps users examine five decades worth of numbers documenting expenditures by federal and local governments, private insurers, and individuals on 15 categories of health services, including hospitals, physician and clinic care, and prescription drugs.

  • How Medicare Negotiated Drug Prices Compare to Other Countries

    Issue Brief

    This analysis finds that Medicare's negotiated prices for 10 high-expenditure prescription drugs are lower than what private Medicare drug plans had been paying, but still much higher than the prices available in 11 other wealthy nations.. It is available on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.

  • Household Health Spending Calculator

    Interactive

    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.

  • Beyond Cost, What Barriers to Health Care do Consumers Face?

    Issue Brief

    High cost-sharing and expenses not covered by insurance leave some people with expensive medical bills. But costs are not the only barriers to health care access. According to KFF's new analysis, many adults can face logistical barriers to care, like work schedules or finding a doctor in network or appointment.