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.
The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker is an online hub monitoring how well the U.S. health system is operating through key quality and cost measures. Visit the Tracker →
Newly updated and expanded, the Peterson-KFF Health System Dashboard compiles data on the U.S. health system’s performance in four areas: access and affordability, health and well-being, health spending, and quality of care. Users can explore trends over time, as well as disparities and differences across demographic groups.
With so many Americans dying, and so many more suffering severe economic hardship, it’s hard to look over the horizon at the larger questions the COVID-19 crisis will bring. The current emergency requires everyone’s attention 24/7. But an emerging set of questions will fall right in the bailiwick of the health policy community. In the shorter term: How many people will lose insurance in the economic crisis? Who are they? How many will gain it back?…
This post looks at potential benchmarks for estimating the number of coronavirus tests needed in the United States and compares them to current national, and state level, testing levels.
The U.S. has 2.8 hospital beds for every 1,000 people, which is similar to bed capacity in Canada and the United Kingdom, but less than other similarly wealthy countries like Italy and Spain, countries that have already been overwhelmed by the coronavirus. Learn more in this Chart of the Week.
A new analysis and chart collection finds that the U.S. has fewer hospital beds and practicing physicians per capita than many similarly large and wealthy countries with health care systems already strained by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to Italy and Spain, two countries in which hospitals have already been overwhelmed by an influx of COVID-19 patients, the U.S. has fewer practicing physicians per capita - 2.6 per 1,000 people, compared to 4.0 in Italy…
More than half of U.S. health spending went toward hospital and physician services in 2018. Learn more about the breakdown of the nation's health spending in the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.
In 2017, 7.2% of the U.S. population was diagnosed with diabetes - an 188% increase from 1980. This slideshow documents trends in health outcomes, quality of care, and spending on treatment for people in the U.S. with diabetes. It also looks at the costs of medications for treating diabetes, and U.S. health spending related to endocrine diseases.
An updated slideshow examines infant mortality rates in the United States, including variations by race and ethnicity and comparisons with similar countries.
This conference report summarizes discussions at a March 2018 conference in Washington with 30 leaders from the health care community to launch Initiative 18/11, a partnership between the Society of Actuaries and KFF to address the rising cost of health care in the United States. It also lays out the next steps for the initiative.
The latest data on U.S. health spending are now available on the Health Spending Explorer, an interactive tool that allows users to explore trends in health expenditures by federal and local governments, insurers, service providers, and individuals. The data, which span from 1960 to 2017, are based on the just-released national health spending report from the federal government. Users can build and download custom charts, with options to filter data by type of service and source…
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