The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
KFF’s policy research provides facts and analysis on a wide range of policy issues and public programs.
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.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the organization’s core operating programs.
The American Health Care Act (AHCA), which has passed the House of Representatives, contains a controversial provision that would allow states to waive community rating in the individual insurance market. In this brief we estimate the number of people with pre-existing conditions who might be affected by such a policy.
In this post for JAMA, the Kaiser Family Foundation's Larry Levitt outlines the health care platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, noting their fundamentally different aims and differing ideas about, among other things, the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) and Medicare.
For more than 35 years, many states operated high-risk pool programs to offer non-group health coverage to uninsurable residents. The federal government also operated a temporary high-risk pool program established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions in advance of when broader insurance market changes took effect in 2014. This issue brief reviews the history of these programs to provide context for some of the potential benefits and challenges of a high-risk pool.
Because the prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders appears to have increased substantially since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, if the ACA is repealed, mental illnesses could be the most common pre-existing conditions.
With the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a lawsuit before the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA) suddenly has a much better chance of succeeding. And, that could make protections for people with pre-existing conditions an even bigger campaign issue.
Facing a challenge now before the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) included provisions to protect people with pre-existing conditions from discrimination in the individual employment market. This post explains what pre-existing conditions are and the different estimates for the number of people who have them.
If the ACA is overturned, federal law protection for people with pre-existing health conditions would end. This post examines what that could mean for people in the time of COVID-19, including whether and how insurers could deny coverage to people who have had COVID or other pre-existing conditions.
Without the ACA, there is nothing in federal law to assure people with pre-existing health conditions access to affordable individual market coverage. This post looks at how overturning the ACA would disproportionately affect older adults, younger women, and people living outside metro areas
As the 2020 Election Day approaches, many candidates continue to focus on health care issues, including on the public health and economic response to COVID-19, the future of the Affordable Care Act, health care costs and abortion.
A week after the 2020 elections, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on a legal challenge, supported by the Trump administration, that seeks to overturn the Affordable Care Act, an outcome that would have major effects throughout the health care system as the law’s provisions have affected nearly all Americans in some way.
© 2025 KFF
