Peterson-KFF

This updated analysis estimates that nationally at least 234,000 deaths from COVID-19 between June 2021 and March 2022 could have been prevented with a primary series of vaccinations. These vaccine-preventable deaths represent 60% of all adult COVID-19 deaths since June 2021, when vaccines first became widely available.

In this commentary for Barron’s, Cynthia Cox explores the impact to the American public as the U.S. health insurance system adjusts to the COVID-19 pandemic. She uses the experience of the past year and a half to raise questions about broader issues of fairness in the distribution of health care costs in the country.

A surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations among people who have not been vaccinated in August is adding billions of dollars in preventable costs to the nation’s health-care system, an updated KFF analysis finds. In August, the new analysis estimates that the preventable costs of treating unvaccinated patients in  hospitals total $3.7…

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.

This analysis finds nearly three quarters of the largest health plans in each state are no longer waiving enrollees’ cost-sharing requirements for COVID-19 treatment as of August 2021. Insurers largely waived those costs early in the pandemic, before safe and effetive vaccines were available.

This analysis finds hospital admissions remained below expected levels in early 2021, suggesting much of the care people put off during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic may have been forgone altogether.

After a tumultuous year of unpredictable COVID-19 changes to utilization and spending, a review of early rate filings for individual market insurers participating in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace finds that most are expecting a return to normal in 2022 without the pandemic playing a large role. The review of…

A new issue brief examines compliance with a new federal price transparency rule and variation in payer-negotiated rates at U.S. hospitals. The analysis looks at the websites of the two largest hospitals in each state and the District of Columbia, and finds that a lack of consistency in the data…

Among people with three consecutive years of coverage from a large employer, just 1.3 percent of enrollees accounted for 19.5 percent of overall health spending in 2017, finds a new KFF analysis. These “people with persistently high spending” – people in the top five percent of spending in each of…

This analysis looks at the amounts and types of health spending for people with employer-based health insurance who have continuing high health care spending. It finds that, among people with three consecutive years of coverage from a large employer, just 1.3 percent of enrollees accounted for almost 20 percent of…