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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.
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.
In this Axios column, Drew Altman unpacks President Biden’s recent executive order on promoting competition, exploring its significance for new efforts to control health costs by addressing consolidation in the health care industry.
This analysis examines list prices for COVID-19 testing at the largest hospitals in every state and finds they range widely from $20 to $850. Federal law now requires private insurers to cover COVID-19 tests at no cost to the patient and provides funding for people without health insurance.
This summarizes key provisions of the No Surprises Act, enacted in December 2020 to address the problem of unexpected medical bills, and issues that could arise during implementation ahead of its Jan. 1, 2022 effective date.
A new KFF analysis examines how new federal rules on price transparency for health services may affect patient decision-making and market pricing. As of January 1, 2021, the United States Department of Health and Human Services requires that hospitals publish payer-negotiated rates for common services on their websites.
A new Peterson-KFF analysis examines the potential impact of new federal price transparency rules on patient decision-making and market pricing for health services. The brief also includes new analysis of geographic variation in health prices.
A new chart collection examines what we know about the cost of common health services in the U.S. The analysis shows that costs for many common health services have risen more rapidly than inflation; for example, the average cost of hospital admission among large employer plans increased by about $10,000 (68%) between 2008 and 2018.
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.
As the coronavirus pandemic enters its eighth month, we are still facing uncertainty about what the long-term impact of the crisis will be for the health sector, and for patients. However, the extent to which costs grow, and how the burden is distributed across payers, programs, individuals, outcomes, and geography are still very much unknown.
Attention to high list prices continues at both the state and federal levels with a number of policy proposals aimed at lowering drug prices and there is renewed interest in drug prices and reimbursement within Medicaid. Changes made in 2016 to federal rules governing how state Medicaid programs pay for drugs aimed to make the prices paid more accurate, but increased reliance on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) pose challenges to drug price transparency. This brief explains Medicaid prescription drug prices to help policymakers and others understand Medicaid’s role in drug pricing and any potential consequences of policy changes for the program.
A new KFF animation explains how rebates for prescription drugs work, including how they are determined, who benefits from them, how they affect spending by insurers and consumers and the role of pharmacy benefit managers in the process.
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