Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues
The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker provides clear, up-to-date information on trends, drivers and issues that impact the performance of the system. It also illustrates how the U.S. is performing relative to other countries and how different parts of the system are performing relative to one another. A partnership of the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the KFF, the Tracker’s work goal places a heavy emphasis on data and evidence, addressing key questions through collections of charts, which provide data with additional context and synthesis of the latest research and developments. The Tracker also provide regular insight briefs for a more in-depth look at topical questions.
This analysis uses government data to examine the burden of medical debt, including variations based on age, race and ethnicity, and health status . It estimates 9% of adults – or roughly 23 million people -owe medical debt, including 11 million who owe more than $2,000.
The Health Spending Explorer on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker helps users examine five decades worth of numbers documenting expenditures by federal and local governments, private insurers, and individuals on 15 categories of health services, including hospitals, physician and clinic care, and prescription drugs.
This analysis looks at the share of working families’ income that is spent on premiums, deductibles and other cost-sharing for employer-sponsored care. It shows that lower-income families spend a greater share of their income on health costs than those with higher incomes.
This analysis assesses whether people can afford to pay cost-sharing amounts common with private insurance plans. It finds that large shares of non-elderly households do not have enough liquid assets to meet typical plan cost-sharing amounts.
Telehealth use skyrocketed during the early months of the pandemic. While it has since decreased somewhat from that high, it still represents a much more substantial share of health care than before COVID, this KFF-Epic Research analysis finds.
This Health Affairs Grantwatch article summarizes findings from several KFF-Peterson Health System Tracker analyses with an emphasis on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact through 2021 and a look ahead toward 2022.
People generally think of their health spending as the amount paid for monthly premium contributions, as well as any out-of-pocket costs toward medical care or prescription drugs. However, a significant portion of health spending is not as visible to people in their everyday lives. This less direct health spending includes…
This updated analysis for the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker estimates that the preventable costs of treating unvaccinated patients in hospitals total $13.8 billion during the six-month period from June through November when the delta variant led to a surge in admissions.
The Health Spending Explorer on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker helps users examine five decades worth of numbers documenting expenditures by federal and local governments, private insurers, and individuals on 15 categories of health services, including hospitals, physician and clinic care, and prescription drugs.
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.
