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This analysis takes a first look at how hospitals are reporting prices under updated federal hospital price transparency requirements that took effect in January 2026.
The 2025 reconciliation law makes sweeping changes to Medicaid that will affect every state through key eligibility and financing changes, including new work requirements, immigrant eligibility restrictions, and changes to provider taxes and state directed payments. This issue brief explains which states will be affected by each of these key provisions.
The KFF/AP Rural Voters Survey examines the views and political priorities of voters living in rural areas across the United States ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The survey gauges rural voters' top election issues, growing struggles with cost of living and health care costs, as well as views on the Trump administration's health care policies.
Rural voters’ frustrations about the cost of living in their community are growing and appear to be chipping away at Republicans’ enthusiasm to vote as the midterm elections near, a new KFF/AP Survey of Rural Voters finds.
The 2025 budget reconciliation created the Rural Health Transformation Program, which will award $50 billion in state grants over a five-year period. This brief provides an overview of the program, describing its structure, how funds can be used, how funding compares to Medicaid spending reductions in the reconciliation law, and how the funds are being distributed across and within states.
The proposed $103,265 fee could lead to reductions in U.S. health care workforce, increasing barriers to care….A decline in H-1B workers would disproportionately impact states that employ the largest shares of H-1B workers (NY, MA, CA, and PA), lower income and rural areas where H-1B health care workers often are employed, and smaller employers, who would face greater challenges paying the fee.
An estimated $60 billion in federal Medicaid spending in 37 states (including the District of Columbia) would likely exceed new federal limits on state directed payments for hospital services once fully implemented, a new KFF analysis finds. States with the biggest potential reductions in Medicaid payments to hospitals include California, Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, North Carolina, Louisiana, Arizona and Michigan.
This analysis estimates the number of states impacted by and the amount of current federal spending on Medicaid state directed payments for hospital services that exceeds the new limits established by the 2025 reconciliation law when fully implemented.
This analysis finds that CMS’s proposed cut to Medicare reimbursement for 340B drugs, and accompanying increase for other outpatient services, would reduce revenues among safety-net hospitals while increasing revenues among for-profit hospitals.
AI is racing into everyday medicine. The rules of the road are still being written. Dr. Michelle Mello of Stanford, professor at both the Law School and the School of Medicine, and co-leader of its Healthcare Ethical Assessment Lab for AI, joins Chip to address the questions that trail every advance this series has covered: who makes the rules, who ensures the technology gets it right — and who answers when it doesn't?
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