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President Trump has vowed to impose tariffs on a wide variety of goods from multiple countries. While consumers may expect the price of some imported goods to go up, what may be surprising is that these tariffs are already driving health insurance premiums up.
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 slideshow explores prescription drug spending for people who are covered by large employer health plans.
Where does President-elect Donald Trump stand on key health care issues? This snapshot outlines his positions and policy statements during the campaign on issues such as health insurance, the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, the opioid epidemic, prescription drug costs, and women's reproductive health.
As the nation struggles with an ongoing epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse, misuse, and overdoses, a new Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds that one in three (34%) of those who recently used such drugs for at least two months report being addicted or dependent. Featured in Sunday’s The Washington Post, the new survey examines the views and experiences of long-term users of strong prescription painkillers, defined as adults who have taken the drugs for…
Although the outpatient drug benefit accounts for only 6% of total Medicaid spending, drug spending has increased by double digits in recent years, and is expected to grow faster than most other Medicaid services in the next 10 years. This issue brief examines drug spending and utilization from 2014 through 2017 by drug group, brand and generic status, and biologic status to understand the causes for this increase in spending.
Antiviral medications, including those that treat hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS, cost the Medicaid program more money (before rebates) than any other group of outpatient prescription drugs for each year from 2014 to 2017, according to a new KFF analysis. The analysis of utilization and spending trends finds that antivirals accounted for more than 13 percent of the $63.6 billion in Medicaid outpatient drug spending pre-rebates in 2017 -- a level disproportionate to their utilization and…
As the Trump Administration and Congress weigh policy options to address high prescription drug prices, a fourth of people taking prescription drugs (24%) and seniors taking drugs (23%) say it is difficult for them to afford their medications, the latest KFF Health Tracking Poll finds. The groups most likely to report difficulties affording their medications include people with monthly drug costs of $100 or more (58%), in fair or poor health (49%), with annual incomes less than $40,000 (35%),…
The Medicare Part D program provides an outpatient prescription drug benefit to older adults and people with long-term disabilities in Medicare who enroll in private plans. This analysis provides the latest data about Medicare Part D coverage and costs in 2019 and trends over time, including enrollment, premiums, cost sharing, and participation in the low-income subsidy program.
The Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit has helped improve the affordability of medications for people with Medicare. Yet Part D enrollees can face relatively high out-of-pocket costs because the Part D benefit does not have a hard cap on out-of-pocket spending. This analysis presents the latest data on out-of-pocket drug spending among Medicare Part D enrollees without low-income subsidies who have costs above the catastrophic coverage threshold.
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