The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
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.
This policy watch evaluates state awards through the rural health fund in 2026, the first year of the program. The analysis shows relatively modest variations in total awards this year across states but wide variation in how much states will receive per rural resident.
Premium support is a general term used to describe an approach to reform Medicare that aims to reduce the growth in Medicare spending. These FAQs raise and discuss basic questions about the possible effects of a premium support system for Medicare beneficiaries, the federal budget, health care providers, and private health plans.
With its inclusion in the House GOP health plan released last month, the idea of converting Medicare into a premium support system once again features prominently in Capitol Hill policy discussions about the future of Medicare, the federal health insurance program that covers 57 million seniors and people with disabilities.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has tracked public opinion on global health issues in-depth since 2009. This most recent survey examines views on U.S. spending on health in developing countries and perceptions of barriers and challenges to making progress on the issue. Two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) overall and majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans alike, say that the United States should play at least a major role in world affairs, including roughly one in five overall (18 percent) who say the U.S. should take the leading role. The survey also finds a general skepticism on the part of the American people when it comes to the effectiveness of global health spending, with seven in ten saying the “bang for the buck” of U.S. spending in this area is only fair or poor, and more than half believing that spending more on global health efforts won’t lead to meaningful progress (a share that has grown since 2012). Although many Americans have concerns about the value of global health spending, six in ten say the U.S. spends too little (26 percent) or about the right amount (34 percent) on global health, and three in ten say it spends too much. Most also recognize benefits to such spending, both for Americans at home as well as for people and communities in developing countries.
The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget host a public forum to discuss the process and implications of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, including the implications of using the budget reconciliation process to repeal the ACA, and what an ACA replacement could mean for health insurance coverage and costs.
Medicare, the nation’s federal health insurance program for 57 million people age 65 and over and younger people with disabilities, often plays a major role in federal health policy and budget discussions. Medicare is likely to be back on the federal policy agenda as Congress debates repealing and replacing the ACA, and also if policymakers turn their attention to reducing entitlement spending as part of efforts to reduce the growing federal budget deficit and debt. This issue brief presents 10 facts and figures about Medicare’s financial status today and the outlook for the future.
This slideshow supports a Visualizing Health Policy infographic with JAMA, spotlighting public opinion on health reform in the United States as of 2017, including priorities and views of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) and its provisions.
In a Health Affairs blog post, Jen Kates and Adam Wexler of the Kaiser Family Foundation and Nafis Sadat and Joseph Dieleman of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation assess what cuts to
This fact sheet highlights key issues about Medicaid, including the structure, financing and purpose of the program, its role for low-income beneficiaries, its share of the federal budget and state budgets and the significant implications of the coverage expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Fact Sheet (.
This Visualizing Health Policy infographic, produced in partnership with the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), provides a snapshot of Medicare and end-of-life care.
© 2026 KFF