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KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
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This brief is focused on racial and ethnic disparities in mental health care, including use of mental health care, barriers to mental health care, the impact of prior experiences of unfair treatment or negative experiences with a provider on use of mental health care, and awareness of the 9-8-8 mental health hotline.
This analysis examines performance metrics to assess utilization of 988’s LGBTQ service (which SAMHSA refers to as the LGBTQI+ subnetwork), compared to usage of 988’s main service, from December 2023 to March 2024 (the most current and comprehensive data available). It finds high demand for the specialty services but also certain challenges (e.g. higher call abandonment rates and longer call wait times than for the main 988 service).
In his new column, KFF CEO Drew Altman discusses how America’s mental health crisis affects families. The number of families experiencing a serious mental health-related event is large enough to constitute a crisis within the larger mental health crisis.
A long-awaited new rule recently finalized by the Biden Administration gives LGBTQ+ people more protections against discrimination when seeking health care and coverage from a range of programs and organizations, including Medicaid, Medicare, Health Insurance Marketplaces, many health insurance plans, and most hospitals and providers.
This brief overviews the Biden Administration’s 2024 final rule implementing Section 1557 of the ACA, which is home to the law’s major nondiscrimination provisions. It provides a brief background on 1557 rulemaking and identifies key differences between this rule and the 2020 rule from the Trump Administration. It highlights two areas of growing interest impacted by the rule – nondiscrimination protections related to pregnancy and nondiscrimination protections for transgender people. Table 2 summarizes the major provisions of the new final rule with side-by-side comparison to the Obama (2016) and Trump (2020) administration rules.
A new analysis of data from KFF’s Survey on Racism, Discrimination, and Health shows Black women are more likely than other groups to report being treated unfairly by a health care provider in recent years because of their race and ethnicity and that these experiences have health consequences.
This brief examines Black women's experiences in health care, including unfair treatment by providers due to race and their health outcomes as a result of this treatment. The brief also explores the association between racially concordant providers and positive health care experiences among Black women.
This brief examines the final CMS regulations governing prior authorization in Medicare Advantage, Marketplace, Medicaid, and other plans, how they might address some current consumer concerns, and some issues that remain.
More states are providing fully state-funded health coverage to some individuals regardless of immigration status. An updated KFF analysis shows that as of March 2024, 12 states and Washington D.C. provide fully state-funded coverage for income-eligible children regardless of immigration status.
This analysis highlights key findings about the health care experiences of older adults (ages 65 and older) based on KFF’s 2023 Survey on Racism, Discrimination, and Health, including variations by race and ethnicity.
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