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.
It’s no secret that the response to the HIV epidemic domestically has not kept pace with the response to the global epidemic. And in an earlier column called America Has Gone Quiet on HIV/AIDS I wrote about the growing complacency towards the domestic epidemic revealed in our recent survey of the American people.
This brief describes how the new board created under the 2010 health reform law is expected to limit the growth in Medicare spending over time.
This data spotlight examines the coverage gap, or "doughnut hole," in Medicare stand-alone drug plans available in 2010. While in the gap in coverage, Part D enrollees (other than those receiving low-income subsidies) are required to pay 100 percent of total drug costs until they reach the catastrophic coverage level.
This analysis examines the potential costs and savings that the health reform law may generate for state budgets, a topic of great interest at a time when states continue to struggle with tight budgets in the wake of the recession.
This Health Affairs article by researchers at the Urban Institute analyzes linked Medicare and Medicaid data to examine dual eligibles' utilization and spending in both programs in 2007. It finds that while the population of people dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid is indeed costly, it is not monolithic.
This paper provides an overview of the joint efforts of states and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop more integrated ways of paying for and delivering health care to the 9 million people who are eligible for both the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed two models to align Medicare and Medicaid benefits and financing for dual eligible beneficiaries, one capitated model and one managed fee-for-service model. In the spring of 2012, 26 states submitted proposals to CMS seeking to test one or both of these models.
A central goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to significantly reduce the number of uninsured by providing a continuum of affordable coverage options through Medicaid and new Health Insurance Exchanges. Following the June 2012 Supreme Court decision, states face a decision about whether to adopt the Medicaid expansion.
The nation's primary payer for long-term services and supports, Medicaid finances 43 percent of all spending on long-term care services and covers a range of services and supports, including those needed by people to live independently in the community, as well as services provided in institutions.
In what would be a domestic policy trifecta, we may be headed for interconnected big debates about economic recovery, entitlement programs and health reform. A core issue in the entitlement and health reform debates is the problem of rising health care costs.
© 2025 KFF