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 brief describes the new executive order, examines the intersection of homelessness and mental illness, reviews the history of the deinstitutionalization movement, and discusses specialized treatment services for people with SMI.
When the federal government ends COVID-19 emergency declarations that were declared in the early days of the pandemic, it will bring to a close several changes that were enacted temporarily to enable the U.S. health care system to better deal with the crisis. A new KFF resource details a number of those flexibilities and lays out what it will mean for people, providers and federal health programs when they go away. One of the key…
“Breakthrough” hospitalizations involving COVID-19 among people who are fully vaccinated against the disease most often affected older adults and people with other chronic health conditions, finds a new analysis of hospital data from June through September by KFF and Epic Research. More than two-thirds (69%) of breakthrough COVID-19 hospitalizations occurred among people ages 65 and older, who are more likely than younger age groups to have gotten vaccinated. A fifth (21%) of breakthrough hospitalizations occurred…
This brief describes the characteristics of fully vaccinated hospitalized patients who have COVID-19 breakthrough infections, in comparison to people who are not fully vaccinated and hospitalized with COVID-19.
Patients with certain conditions appear to be at higher risk for receiving surprise bills. They should be aware of new federal protections against surprise bills and know how to seek out help if they have improperly received one.
Adopting Denmark’s vaccine schedule, as HHS Secretary Kennedy's vaccine advisors have suggested, would likely lower childhood vaccination rates in the U.S. as certain vaccines become harder to access.
Editor's Note: The press release was updated on March 27, 2023, to reflect corrections in the underlying analysis, resulting in a modest increase in the total estimated value of tax exemption, from $27.6 to $28.1 billion. The tax-exempt status of the nation’s nonprofit hospitals collectively was worth about $28 billion in 2020, a new KFF analysis of hospital financial data estimates. The total reflects the estimated federal, state and local taxes that nonprofit hospitals do…
KFF’s Kaiser Health News (KHN) and Guardian US have won the National Press Club’s top award for online journalism for their “Lost on the Frontline” investigation. The year-long project documented the lives of more than 3,600 health care workers in the U.S. who died after contracting covid-19 on the job. The Press Club’s Joan M. Friedenberg Online Journalism Award recognizes “the best journalism that uses online technology to provide a more compelling report than a…
A new investigation by KFF’s Kaiser Health News (KHN) lays bare the sizeable efforts by private equity investors to take over large and lucrative parts of the U.S health care system in recent years. KHN found that private equity firms have invested nearly $1 trillion through thousands of deals to acquire hospitals and specialized medical practices during the last decade alone. The deals, many of them unnoticed by federal regulators, typically result in a ratcheting…
Since 2021, federal law has required hospitals to publicly post information about their standard prices and negotiated discount rates for common health services to encourage consumers to compare prices and to promote competition. To date, however, the transparency data currently shared by hospitals to comply with the law are messy, inconsistent and confusing, making it challenging, if not impossible, for patients or researchers to use them to compare prices across hospitals or payers, a new…
© 2026 KFF