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KFF’s policy research provides facts and analysis on a wide range of policy issues and public programs.
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.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the organization’s core operating programs.
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.
The new health reform law will require most U.S. citizens and legal residents to have health coverage by 2014. It provides new options for coverage by expanding Medicaid eligibility to more low-income people and creating a state-based system of health insurance exchanges through which individuals can purchase coverage, with federal subsidies for many.
This issue brief dissects the issues raised by the legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that private insurance plans include contraception as part of their coverage of preventive services for women. Over 40 for-profit corporations and over 40 nonprofit corporations have filed lawsuits claiming that the requirement to provide their employees with contraceptives violates their religious rights. On November 26, 2013, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases filed by for-profit corporations, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, that claim that this requirement violates their religious rights. At the crux of these cases is a question that the Supreme Court has not previously addressed: Do for-profit corporations have religious protections under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment? The brief provides background on how the ACA’s contraceptive requirement works, summarizes some of the legal challenges brought by for-profit and non-profit organizations and discusses the implications of potential rulings by the Supreme Court.
This brief provides an overview of the many different paths to enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, including paths created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and reviews the available national level data on enrollment through these avenues.
This report provides an in-depth examination of the changes taking place in Medicaid programs across the country. The findings are drawn from the 20th annual budget survey of Medicaid officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia conducted by KFF and Health Management Associates (HMA), in collaboration with the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD). This report focuses on Medicaid policy changes planned for FY 2021, particularly those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. Supreme Court decisions shape health policy in important ways. The nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, if confirmed, is expected to establish a solid 6:3 conservative majority that could affect case outcomes in several areas. This issue brief considers the potential implications of a reconfigured Court for health policy issues, including those already on the Court’s docket for the coming term and those that the Court may choose to consider in this term or in the future.
In recent weeks, the possible overturning of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in court and the upcoming election have focused attention on the issue of protections for people with pre-existing conditions. While the focus has been on the ACA’s private insurance protections, Medicaid also plays a significant role in covering people with pre-existing conditions.
Most Medicare Advantage enrollees are in plans that have waived cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment, and many other beneficiaries in traditional Medicare have their cost sharing covered by supplemental insurance. This blog post discusses the 6 million Medicare beneficiaries without supplemental coverage who would face out-of-pocket costs if they require treatment for COVID-19.
In this May 2020 post for The JAMA Health Forum, Larry Levitt explores how the massive and rapid job losses of the past few months will test the ACA’s coverage safety net – and how different policies could strengthen or weaken it.
This issue brief examines how the ACA Medicaid expansion has affected racial disparities in health coverage, access to care, health outcomes, and economic outcomes.
The debate over filling the Supreme Court seat previously held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg has brought renewed attention to the possibility of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) being overturned under the court challenge in California v. Texas, currently scheduled to be heard shortly after the election this November. The expansion of Medicaid was a central component of the ACA, and 39 states have now adopted the ACA expansion into their Medicaid programs. Because Medicaid is administered by states, under federal guidelines, there may be some confusion about how overturning the federal law would affect state Medicaid programs.
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