Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues
The latest Kaiser Health Tracking poll finds that amid a public debate about contraceptive coverage in insurance plans, 63 percent of Americans support a new federal requirement that plans include no-cost birth control, while a third oppose it. Catholics split along similar lines, but there’s a big partisan divide, including among…
Several provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will likely have significant effects on small businesses, their employees, and families. Currently, smaller businesses are less likely to offer health insurance coverage to their employees than larger companies: 57% of small businesses with 50 or fewer workers offered health benefits to…
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), beginning in 2014 all states will employ streamlined, technology-driven enrollment systems to help eligible people sign up for insurance affordability programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the new health insurance exchange marketplaces. Even with these streamlined systems in place, application assistance…
This chartpack highlights demographic data about African Americans, Hispanics and whites with Medicare to highlight potential implications for outreach efforts under the new Medicare drug benefit. The information is being used in a series of November 2005 briefings at the start of the first open-enrollment period for the new benefit.…
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act calls for the creation of Health Insurance Exchanges in all states by January 1, 2014. The exchanges are a critical element of the health reform law, aimed at helping individuals and families shop for and purchase health insurance on their own with additional…
This article, by Ruth Almeida and Lisa Dubay of the Urban Institute and Grace Ko of Brown University, examines the effect of insurance on low-income women’s access to care and use of health services. Using the 1997 National Survey of America’s Families, it examines access to health care for three…
This video profiles patients attending a dental fair in rural Virginia and highlights the impact of lack of coverage for oral health services. Uninsured adults have vast oral care needs, and untreated dental problems can have serious health, employment and social consequences. To download the video, right-click here and select…
The Kaiser Family Foundation has produced three documentaries to mark the 40th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid. The documentaries examine the social needs that led policymakers to create these programs, the expectations of what they would achieve and the reality of these programs today. Key policymakers, staff officials and members…
As states and communities gear up to provide outreach and enrollment assistance under the ACA, the enrollment assistance experience of health centers in Massachusetts, where a major expansion of health coverage was implemented six years ago, offers valuable lessons that can help to inform current and emerging efforts by health centers and other community-based organizations to reach and enroll millions of low-income, uninsured Americans in health insurance.
This fact sheet provides an overview of resident socio-demographic characteristics, population health, health coverage, and the health care delivery system in Louisiana both pre-Hurricane Katrina and in the era of health reform.
