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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.
This Health Policy 101 chapter explores the complex landscape of private health insurance regulation in the United States, detailing the interplay between state and federal regulations that shape access, affordability, and the adequacy of private health coverage. It focuses on key laws such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Employer Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), and discusses how regulations impact the private insurance market, illustrating the challenges consumers face in navigating this system.
Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded health coverage. The GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill didn’t change that. Overturning the health care provisions in the law won’t either.
disparity, Disparities
This policy watch explains how abortion coverage works in ACA Marketplace plans, state actions to include or exclude abortion coverage in these plans, and the potential impact if Congress bans abortion coverage in all Marketplace plans.
This policy watch outlines the groups of lawfully present immigrants that will lose access to federally funded health coverage due to the 2025 tax and budget law, and the CBO’s estimates of the increases in the uninsured.
With recent federal actions to curtail vaccine access, many states have announced actions intended to maintain broader access. This issue brief provides a snapshot of this rapidly changing landscape, tracking which states have instituted changes in response to or in anticipation of administration policy changes.
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