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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.
For more than a year-and-a-half, the continuous enrollment requirement tied to enhanced Medicaid funding during the COVID-19 pandemic has all but halted enrollment “churn,” the temporary loss of coverage in which people disenroll from Medicaid and then re-enroll within a short period of time.
Recent policy actions and proposals in Medicaid have renewed focus on the problem of churn, or temporary loss of coverage in which enrollees disenroll and then re-enroll within a short period of time. We find that 10% of full-benefit enrollees have a gap in coverage of less than a year, and rates are higher for children and adults compared to aged and people with disabilities. Churn has implications for access to care as well as administrative costs faced by states.
In this issue brief, we use 2020 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to examine key characteristics, coverage and health status of nonelderly adults with mental illness or substance use disorders to help inform ongoing federal and state efforts to improve quality and expand access.
In this column for the JAMA Health Forum, Larry Levitt highlights four changes implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic that helped to make health care more accessible and affordable and the prospects for those changes to telehealth, COVID-19 coverage, Medicaid and marketplace premiums continuing beyond the pandemic’s end.
This brief examines typical enrollment patterns for Medicaid and CHIP and uses 2018 Medicaid claims data to gain insight into the effects of the continuous enrollment requirements by eligibility group. Roughly 2% of Medicaid enrollees come on or leave the program in an average month, although there is variation across eligibility groups. A policy to require continuous enrollment would result in sharp reductions in monthly disenrollment rates and would also reduce monthly enrollment rates due to reductions in churn.
Providing paid time off to employees to get and recover from any side effects could help boost vaccination rates. Overall, nearly three in ten (28%) employed adults who not yet ready to get the vaccine say that they would be more likely to get the COVID-19 vaccine if their employer gave them paid time off to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects.
Disparities in health and health care for people of color and underserved groups are longstanding challenges. This brief provides an introduction to what health and health care disparities are, why it is important to address disparities, the status of disparities today, recent federal actions to address disparities, and key issues related to addressing disparities looking ahead.
This literature review report summarizes evidence from nearly 200 studies on the effects of Medicaid expansion published between February 2020 and March 2021. These studies generally find beneficial impacts of expansion across a range of areas.
This survey of executive decision-makers at over 300 large private employers finds most see rising health costs as a threat to their businesses and believe a broader government role will be necessary to control health costs and ensure coverage.
This page tracks recent state actions to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage, including approved and pending 1115 waivers, legislation that will require the state to seek federal approval through a SPA or 1115 waiver, submitted and approved SPAs, and coverage financed solely with state funds.
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