Prescription Drugs

To understand the role of Medicare Part D stand-alone prescription drug plans in serving rural Medicare beneficiaries, this data note analyzes 2025 Part D enrollment in PDPs and Medicare Advantage drug plans by geographic area nationally and at the state level.

In a new Trump administration executive order, the Secretary of HHS is directed to work with Congress to implement a change in law to delay negotiation of so-called “small molecule” drugs under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program for an additional 4 years. This brief analyzes how many of the drugs previously selected for negotiation would not have been eligible if this policy had been in place at the time.

KFF and the Peterson Center on Healthcare examine market trends contributing to rising health costs and identify several potential federal and state policy issues to watch throughout 2025, including high-cost drugs, federal funding cuts, and workforce shortages.

This data note analyzes employer-sponsored insurance and Medicaid claims data to see how mifepristone and misoprostol—two drugs used in the medication abortion regimen—are prescribed for reasons other than abortion including management of miscarriages, abnormal bleeding or hemorrhage, as well as IUD insertions and other conditions.

This volume examines the impact of recent executive actions on federal health communication, along with concerns and stigmas surrounding ADHD diagnoses and treatments, including skepticism about pharmaceutical influence on medication promotion. It also explores distrust in food regulations following the FDA’s ban on Red Dye No. 3.

KFF’s January 2025 Prescription Drug Advertisements Poll looks at the public’s experiences with prescription drug advertisements, whether they’ve talked to a doctor about advertised drugs, and how this has influenced the care they receive.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced the drugs selected for the second round of negotiation for the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, which was established by the Inflation Reduction Act. These FAQs address several questions related to Medicare’s drug price negotiation program and CMS’s implementation of the program, with a focus on the details that apply for 2027, the second year that negotiated prices will be available under the program.

With the incoming Trump administration and Republican-led Congress looking to ways to reduce federal spending, this Poll finds that the Medicare and Medicaid programs remain broadly popular, and more people favor more spending on those programs than less spending. Among potential actions on health, the public sees price transparency and limiting chemicals in food as top priorities. Few say so about cuts to Medicaid and restrictions on abortion.

This analysis finds that Medicare’s negotiated prices for 10 high-expenditure prescription drugs are lower than what private Medicare drug plans had been paying, but still much higher than the prices available in 11 other wealthy nations.. It is available on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.

This policy watch examines the implications of new proposed regulations that would allow Medicare and require Medicaid to cover drugs used to treat obesity, including a relatively new class of highly effective but costly drugs known as GLP-1s.