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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.
This brief examines key facts around proposals to align Medicare payments for outpatient services across care settings, otherwise known as “site-neutral payment reforms.”
This analysis examines the recent growth of Medicare Advantage as a share of hospital inpatient days. Medicare Advantage rose from 13% to 25% of all inpatient days from 2015 to 2023, although there was wide variation among hospitals.
In this July 1 column for The New York Times Opinion section, KFF Executive Vice President for Health Policy Larry Levitt explains how the budget reconciliation bill passed by the Senate on July 1 is effectively a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and, if signed into law, the resulting reductions in Medicaid…
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.
To provide historical context for how changes to Medicaid spending may impact national health spending trends, this brief explores how Medicaid spending contributes to national health spending and how different service areas contribute to Medicaid costs.
This issue brief analyzes the role that immigrants play in the hospital workforce, overall and by occupation and state. Immigrants account for about one in six hospital workers, including among clinical and nonclinical workers.
This brief describes five key takeaways from CMS's Notice of Funding Opportunity for the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program. It includes information about how CMS intends to review state applications and distribute funds and ongoing questions about the impact on rural hospitals, the distribution of funds across rural hospitals and states, and issues related to oversight and transparency.
The new reconciliation law includes a $50 billion rural health fund. This brief describes the rural health fund, explains what the law says about the allocation of funds, and highlights outstanding questions about how the funds will be distributed across and within states to pay rural hospitals and for other purposes.
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