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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.
This issue brief provides a broad-based grounding in adolescent health and related policy by examining access to health services for adolescents, their insurance coverage, and the role of state and federal policies in shaping access to care. The brief also discusses how implementation of the the health reform law may affect health coverage, access, and incentives to use preventive care for adolescents.
Beginning in 2014, state-based health insurance exchanges will be created to facilitate coverage and choice, with the hope that enhanced competition among insurers will help to moderate premiums for individuals and small groups. This analysis by the Foundation assesses the competitiveness of state insurance markets for individuals and small businesses to establish a baseline as implementation of the health reform law proceeds and to provide context for the policy decisions states will be considering. The…
Premiums for employer-provided health insurance, where 150 million Americans get their coverage, jumped 9% in 2011 while workers’ wages grew just 2%, according to our annual employer survey. The average family policy now costs more than $15,000 per year, more than the cost of a Chevy Aveo or a Ford Fiesta. Since we began doing this survey thirteen years ago, worker contributions to premiums have increased 168%, wages 50%, and inflation 38%. Critics of the…
The Affordable Care Act creates a process for states and the Department of Health and Human Services to review “unreasonable” premium increases and provide information to consumers about the process. The rules governing this rate review process went into effect September 1, 2011. This briefing by the Kaiser Family Foundation, held on September 22, 2011, addressed how these new rules might work and what the implications may be for the growth in health insurance premiums…
This report considers Medicaid’s current role in providing health coverage for people with HIV. It analyzes national enrollment and spending patterns for Medicaid enrollees with HIV, looking at key demographics, Medicaid eligibility pathways, services and geographic distribution. It also compares Medicaid enrollees with HIV to their counterparts without the disease, as well as to the population of people living with HIV in the U.S. The report finds that while Medicaid enrollees with HIV represent less…
This paper examines the impact on enrollment and families of Arizona's Dec. 21, 2009, decision to freeze enrollment in KidsCare, the state's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The CHIP enrollment freeze, enacted in response to recession-driven state budget pressures, saved the state $12.9 million in FY 2011, but has also resulted in more than 100,000 children being placed on a waiting list for coverage and the loss of $41 million in federal matching funds. Issue…
This Kaiser Family Foundation study examines how the coverage gap in Medicare’s drug benefit known as the “doughnut hole” affects Medicare beneficiaries and their prescribing patterns. Based on actual claims data from 2008 and 2009, before the 2010 health reform law began to close the gap, the study finds that most Part D enrollees with high drug costs who fall in the gap one year are likely to do so in future years. Enrollees who…
If there is one thing there is general agreement on when it comes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) it’s that it will help the uninsured. The estimates are that 32 million people will gain coverage under the law through an expansion of Medicaid and tax credits, which will help low- and moderate-income people purchase coverage through the new insurance exchanges. Therefore, it was a real surprise in our latest tracking poll to learn that…
Remember the “government takeover of the health care system” argument that critics of the health reform law have used? Well, last week the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published the latest projections of health spending in the journal Health Affairs. Attention focused mainly on the Actuary’s estimate that national health spending would grow to almost 20% of GDP by 2020 and that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would…
Not since Geraldo Rivera revealed the secret contents of Al Capone's vault on national TV in the mid-80s, or more recently, sports fans awaited the LeBron James "decision" about where he would play next, have we so anxiously awaited anything as much as the draft health exchange regulations just published by HHS. Well, okay, I exaggerate for effect, but the regulations on health insurance exchanges were anxiously awaited by the health policy community. The hallmark…
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