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.
This chart collection draws on recent KFF poll findings to provide an in-depth look at the public's attitudes toward prescription drugs and their prices. Results include Americans' opinions on drug affordability, pharmaceutical companies, and various potential measures that could lower prices, including the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Build Back Better Act (BBBA) includes a range of health and other proposals supported by President Biden, including a proposal to allow the federal government to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs covered under Medicare Part B (administered by physicians) and Medicare Part D (retail outpatient drugs). This brief illustrates the potential scope of the drug price negotiation proposal in the BBBA. This analysis is designed to highlight the types of Medicare-covered drugs that could be subject to negotiation, and which of the current top-spending drugs covered by Part B and Part D could be subject to price negotiation, and in what years, if the BBBA is enacted.
As the House-passed Build Back Better Act moves to the Senate, a new explainer from KFF summarizes the key prescription drug provisions within the broader budget reconciliation bill. These provisions would lower prescription drug costs paid by people with Medicare and private insurance and curb drug spending by the federal government and private payers.
We review several policy options to constrain health care spending, primarily by putting downward pressure on provider prices, including price regulation, global budgets, and spending growth targets.
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.
Among the 167 million people with employer-sponsored insurance in 2022, 3.4 million used at least one of the first 10 drugs identified for Medicare price negotiations, according to a new analysis.
This analysis finds that privately insured adults who were treated for depression and/or anxiety in 2021 spent almost twice as much on annual out-of-pocket costs compared to enrollees who were not treated for a mental health diagnosis.
Some insurers in the ACA’s small group market are citing tariffs, particularly those affecting prescriptions drugs, as a reason for higher-than-expected premium increases.
As the Biden administration begins the process of negotiation drug prices for Medicare as authorized in the Inflation Reduction Act, KFF's Larry Levitt probes some of the arguments against it and the policy and political implications of the debate in this New York Times op-ed column.
In this column, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman explores why the public's concerns about out-of-pocket health costs make health care affordability the health policy issue most likely to resonate with voters across the political spectrum.
© 2025 KFF