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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.
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.
This analysis uses 2019 insurance claims data from large employer health plans to assess the total and out-of-pocket costs of emergency department visits, overall and by diagnosis and severity level. It also looks at which services contribute most to the costs of emergency department visits.
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 spending by federal and local governments, insurers, nursing care, hospital, and other service providers, and consumers.
Most nonprofit hospitals and hospital systems had enough cash on hand in 2022 to cover operating expenses for an extended period of time, though about one-in-10 had relatively low levels to cover their expenses, which potentially could leave them vulnerable in a financial crisis, a new KFF analysis finds.
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.
Rural hospitals fared worse financially in states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act than in states that expanded Medicaid, a new KFF analysis finds.
This analysis for the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker uses claims data from private, large employer-based plan to examine trends in complexity coding across outpatient practice settings from 2004 to 2021. It finds a trend toward higher complexity codes that contributes to higher outpatient spending.
With the high costs of emergency department visits of significant importance to consumers and policymakers, this analysis examines claims data from privately insured individuals with large employer health plans, to examine the role that facility fees play in rising cost of emergency care.
The News Leaders Association (NLA) awarded KFF’s Kaiser Health News (KHN) and Guardian US the 2021 Batten Medal for Coverage of the Coronavirus Pandemic for their year-long “Lost on the Frontline” investigation documenting the lives of more than 3,600 health care workers in the
In spite of a new price transparency rule that requires hospitals to publish the prices of common health services, comparing prices across hospitals remains challenging due to limited compliance with the law and a lack of standardization in the available data, a new KFF analysis finds.
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