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KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
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A study in the March/April 2007 issue of Health Affairs analyzes the impact of state tort reforms on physician malpractice claims. The study finds that the tort law changes have had a measurable but limited impact on physician malpractice claims, depending on the type and strength of the tort reform.
This analysis provides a detailed look at per person Medicare spending on the nearly 30 million beneficiaries over age 65 who are enrolled in the traditional Medicare program. Among the key findings of the report is that per person spending rises with age, peaking at age 96. But this rise is not entirely explained by Medicare spending on end of life care, which declines with age. What Medicare spends money on also changes as beneficiaries age. Hospital care is the largest component of Medicare spending throughout the age curve, up to age 100, but there is less spending on physician services and more on home health, skilled nursing and hospice care as beneficiaries age.
This brief survey examines how the public views the motivations of doctors, nurses, insurance companies, and drug companies when it comes to making profits vs. working for the public good. It updates a question asked in 2005 to measure how views have changed over time.
Medicare Advantage enrollees were in a plan that included just under half (48%) of all physicians available to traditional Medicare beneficiaries in their area in 2022, on average. The limitations of provider networks illustrate one of the key tradeoffs for beneficiaries in choosing Medicare Advantage for their coverage.
More than half of U.S. health spending went toward hospital and physician services in 2018. Learn more about the breakdown of the nation's health spending in the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.
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.
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.
This brief examines the supply of OB-GYNs in the U.S. and the share of OB-GYNs participating in the provider networks of Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) offered in the individual market in the federal and state Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplaces in 2021.
This brief examines the share of non-pediatric office-based physicians accepting new patients with Medicare or private insurance and how these rates have changed over time and vary by physician specialties, geographic areas, and physician and practice characteristics across Medicare and private insurance. This analysis further examines the extent to which non-pediatric physicians are opting out of Medicare, by specialty and state.
This analysis for the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker uses claims data from private, large employer-based plan to examine trends in complexity coding across outpatient practice settings from 2004 to 2021. It finds a trend toward higher complexity codes that contributes to higher outpatient spending.
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