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  • What Role Do Immigrants Play in the Hospital Workforce?

    Issue Brief

    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.

  • What to Know About How Medicare Pays Physicians

    Issue Brief

    In November 2024, CMS finalized a 2.83% decrease in the physician fee schedule conversion factor, a key aspect of payment rates under the Medicare program, resulting in a 2.93% decrease in overall payments to physicians and other clinicians. Congress has not yet enacted legislation to address this payment cut, which went into effect on January 1, 2025. This issue brief answers key questions about how physicians are paid under the Medicare program, and reviews policy options under discussion for payment reform.

  • Challenges with Effective Price Transparency Analyses

    Issue Brief

    Promoting price transparency in health care is a policy approach with bi-partisan support in Congress and the public at large. This analysis examines the vast troves of price transparency data that payers are required and finds unlikely prices, inconsistencies, and other oddities that pose major challenges for efforts to use it to promote competition and drive down prices.

  • The Semi-Sad State of Consumer Protection In Health Care

    From Drew Altman

    In this column, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman explores the state of consumer protections in health care and explains why, even with consumer frustration clear, Congress is unlikely to pursue major new health insurance protections but there could be some modest steps.

  • How Narrow or Broad Are ACA Marketplace Physician Networks?

    Report

    This report examines the share of doctors participating in the provider networks of Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) offered in the individual market in the federal and state Marketplaces in 2021, and how network breadth affected costs for enrollees.