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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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State Health Facts is a KFF project that provides free, up-to-date, and easy-to-use health data for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the United States. It offers data on specific types of health insurance coverage, including employer-sponsored, Medicaid, Medicare, as well as people who are uninsured by demographic characteristics, including age, race/ethnicity, work status, gender, and income. There are also data on health insurance status for a state's population overall and broken down by age, gender, and income.
A survey finds that two-thirds of small employers say that they are dissatisfied with the cost of health care and health insurance, and about one-third of small businesses that now offer insurance say they are likely to increase the share of costs borne by employees in the next year. Survey Highlights and Chart Pack Toplines/Survey
Sicker and Poorer: The Consequences of Being Uninsured A new report by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured synthesizes the major findings of the past 25 years of health services research assessing the most important effects of health insurance. The report evaluates thousands of citations and 230 research articles to assess the consequences of being uninsured for health status and economic opportunity and concludes that the weight of this large body of research…
An issue brief that looks at mandated health insurance benefits and the tradeoffs among benefits, coverage, and costs. It explores the debate over mandated benefits legislation, the evidence about the impact of mandates, the status of mandated benefits in other states and in California.
A background report that assesses how various factors influence changes in the health care system for immigrants in four urban areas with large immigrant populations (Los Angeles, New York, Houston, and Miami.) Background Paper
Analyses of the Child Health Plan and Other Kaiser Permanente Services for Publicly and Privately Insured Children, a new policy brief prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation and the California HealthCare Foundation by the Institute for Health Policy Studies at U.C. San Francisco, summarizes the results and policy implications of four different analyses comparing the experiences of children enrolled through Kaiser Permanente in the Child Health Plan, Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, and commercial programs. The aggregate…
This testimony was delivered by Tricia Neuman, a vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Bush Administration's Proposals for Medicare Modernization. The statement, which draws upon a report prepared for the Foundation by Health Policy Alternatives, Inc., provides an overview of existing prescription drug discount card programs, describes some of the features of the Administration's recently released proposal for a Medicare-endorsed discount card program, and raises some…
Protection in Managed Care Plans: A Side-by-Side Comparison of Proposed Federal Legislation. A side-by-side comparison of the provisions for consumer protection in managed care plans contained in the House and Senate budget reconciliation bills and in eight other consumer protection bills currently under consideration by Congress. These bills, which would increase the regulatory oversight of the managed care industry by the federal government, are compared in 22 different categories of managed care issues. Report Report
State Reforms of Small Group Health Insurance Between 1989 and 1995, 45 states enacted laws to make health insurance more accessible and attractive to small businesses. The small group market was targeted for reform because about half of all uninsured workers are either self-employed or working in firms with fewer than 25 employees (EBRI, 1996). The problem is that only about half of all small firms offer health insurance (Figure 1). In 1995, 53% of…
This report analyzes recently enacted laws in Texas and Missouri that expand consumers' ability to sue their HMOs or other managed care plans for inappropriately denied care or similar problems. Report Report
A growing trend by state legislatures to pass tough regulations on abortion services begs the questions: Do these rules help to ensure the health and safety of abortion patients and the quality of abortion services? Or, as some abortion rights groups have suggested, are they designed to put abortion providers out of business? National Committee for Quality Assurance Chief Executive Officer, Margaret O'Kane, National Abortion Federation Committee on Quality Improvement Chair, Dr. Bernard Smith, and…
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