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The summary and chartpack highlight key findings from the joint USA Today/Kaiser/Harvard School of Public Health survey exploring Americans’ views on health care costs. Survey Summary and Chartpack (.pdf)
This comprehensive survey from USA Today, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health examines how Americans are being affected by health care costs. The survey includes information on the barriers health care costs pose to obtaining medical care and the alternative measures people take to lower their medical and prescription drug bills. The is based on a nationally representative sample of 1,531 adults ages 18 years and older, conducted between April…
This document includes the toplines from the joint USA Today/Kaiser/Harvard School of Public Health survey exploring Americans’ views on health care costs. Survey Toplines (.pdf)
Most people get their health care through some form of managed care plan – a health maintenance organization, preferred provider organization, or point-of-service option. Most of the time, people receive the care they need, but the potential exists for disagreements over the services that will be provided or paid for by health plans. Health plans are required to follow state and federal rules for handling their enrollee’s complaints and appeals inside the health plan, known…
On Jan. 25, 2005, Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a demonstration of the online tools made available to enrollees in consumer-directed health plans. Executives from Humana and Lumenos -- two major firms in the consumer-directed care market -- conducted real-time demonstrations of their consumer web tools to show how enrollees might manage the costs and quality of their care. Consumer-directed, or consumer-driven, health plans are intended to give enrollees a financial stake in their health care…
This report provides information about the individual health insurance market using data from the largest vendor of this type of insurance, eHealthInsurance. The report includes who is buying individual insurance, what they are actually paying for the insurance, and buying patterns. It is the first in an up-coming series of reports jointly produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation and eHealthInsurance to provide trend information in such areas of interest as premiums and cost sharing, and…
This issue brief looks at the coverage impacts and costs of two components of the administration’s FY 2005 budget proposals to increase the affordability of health insurance: a new tax credit for people purchasing non-group health insurance and a new tax deduction for premiums for high-deductible, non-group health insurance policies. The estimates were prepared by Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D., Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, using a micro-simulation model developed in conjunction with…
Private Long-Term Care Insurance: Who Should Buy It and What Should They Buy? Despite the growing interest in private long-term care insurance (LTCI), there has been little independent examination of how much protection LTCI policies provide consumers or whether LTCI policies are a worthwhile purchase for people of average means. This report draws on data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the 1996 Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS) to explore the feasibility…
Regulation of Private Long-Term Care Insurance: Implementation Experience and Key Issues While private long-term care insurance (LTCI) has been available since the mid-1970s, its popularity has grown rapidly in recent years, and Congress is considering proposals that would further encourage LTCI purchase through expanded tax subsidies. Yet there has been little research on how well LTCI works and how much security it really provides. This report focuses on consumer protections for individuals buying LTCI in…
This primer, prepared by Gary Claxton of the Institute for Health Care Research and Policy at Georgetown University, examines the structure and operation of private health insurance including the types of organizations that provide it, how managed care is delivered, and how risk pools work and describes how private health insurance coverage is regulated under state and federal laws. The primer explains how the current nature of private insurance relates to key issues facing federal…
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