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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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Medicaid, the main health insurance program for low-income people and the single largest source of public coverage in the U.S., turns 50 this year. In that time, it has grown to cover nearly 70 million Americans and become a key source of financing for safety net hospitals and health centers, as well as the main source of coverage and financing of long-term care. The program continues to be a focus of policy debate and partisan…
Expanded health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is having a major impact on many of the nation’s hospitals through increases in the demand for care, increased patient revenues, and lower uncompensated care costs for the uninsured. This report examines the early experiences with the ACA by Ascension Health, the delivery subsidiary of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health system, Ascension. It finds that, overall, Ascension hospitals in Medicaid expansion states saw increased Medicaid…
The FY15 Omnibus Appropriations Act contains $5.4 billion in emergency funding to address the Ebola crisis – a significant increase in total U.S. support for global health. Aside from the additional funding for Ebola, global health funding remained essentially flat at $9.2 billion, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation funding analysis. Of the total emergency funding to respond to Ebola, which is outside the budget caps for discretionary spending, $3.7 billion is specifically for…
This brief shows trends in hospital admissions during the coronavirus pandemic. Admissions to hospitals for reasons other than COVID-19 fell markedly again in November 2020 as cases of infections with the novel coronavirus began to surge anew, suggesting that more people were delaying care due to the worsening pandemic.
This brief takes a closer look at multiple measures beyond waiver waiting lists to evaluate state choices about optional Medicaid eligibility pathways, spending, and services for seniors and people with disabilities as of 2018. The analysis draws on several KFF resources, including 50-state surveys of Medicaid financial eligibility pathways for seniors and people with disabilities, HCBS waiver programs, and state plan benefits offered, as well as state Medicaid LTSS expenditures reported by Mathematica.
This brief analyzes leading federal approaches to address Medicaid prescription drug spending, discusses (where available) a range of cost estimates for each policy, and assesses what drives those estimates or where there is uncertainty in them.
Chip talks with Dr. Toyin Ajayi, co-founder and CEO of Cityblock Health, which delivers value-based care to more than 100,000 Medicaid and dual-eligible members across ten states, many of them people of color managing chronic conditions. Ajayi makes a pointed case: Roughly 60 percent of health care AI investment goes to billing, coding, and risk adjustment — making sure someone gets paid — while only a fraction goes to delivering care. If we continue to…
The Medicare program will spend at least $13 billion on the Medicare Advantage quality bonus program in 2026, as 68% of Medicare Advantage enrollees are in a plan that qualifies for higher payments under the program.
CBO’s latest projections of Medicaid spending and enrollment from February 2026 show how enrollment and spending are expected to change over the next decade, accounting for the historic policy changes and their expected reductions in future federal Medicaid spending, as well as other economic and technical changes. This policy watch compares CBO’s February 2026 projections of Medicaid spending and enrollment to earlier CBO projections.
This tracker provides up-to-date information on countries with signed bilateral MOU global health agreements with the U.S.
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