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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.
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This short explainer provides an overview of open enrollment and the 2020 individual insurance market, including Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, for consumers who buy their own plans rather than getting insurance through an employer.
Following several years of rapid enrollment growth in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplaces that corresponded with temporary enhanced premium tax credits, enrollment fell for the first time in seven years in 2026, when those tax credits expired. Every state except for New Mexico saw a drop in ACA Marketplace enrollment from 2025 to 2026. State-based Marketplaces that run their own enrollment platforms, including those that partially offset the expiring federal enhanced tax credits, generally…
As open enrollment begins for Marketplace plans, this Policy Watch provides information about consumer experiences with Marketplace sign up from the 2023 KFF Consumer Survey. Data from the survey show that Marketplace sign up has been a challenge to many consumers---often more complicated than enrollment in other kinds of health insurance. The Policy Watch also spotlights efforts to address common enrollment problems such as option overload and transitioning to Marketplace coverage from other forms of…
With the Supreme Court preparing to hear oral arguments about challenges to the 2010 Affordable Care Act in March 2012, this Kaiser Family Foundation brief serves as a primer on the pending case, which challenges the constitutionality both of the law's individual mandate that requires most Americans to obtain health insurance and of provisions requiring states to expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs. The brief provides an overview of the pending case, the key constitutional…
Every summer, health insurers submit rate filings to state regulators detailing expectations and justifying premium rate changes for ACA-regulated health plans for the coming year. With the enhanced premium tax credits set to expire at the end of 2025, consumers can expect increases in how much they pay for coverage. KFF examines 23 early insurer premium filings from Vermont, Oregon, Washington, and Washington, DC, which include an additional 4 percent increase in premiums, on average,…
This chart examines individual market enrollment data from 2011 through 2025, when enrollment reached a record high of 25.2 million people. Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace enrollment increased following the enactment of enhanced premium tax credits in 2021, as more individuals became eligible for subsidies.
In a new column, Dr. Drew Altman, KFF’s President and CEO, discusses the limits of polling on policy, and what we have learned over more than 30 years of polling about how giving people more information and arraying tradeoffs can change opinion, including on the health policy changes and funding cuts in the current reconciliation bill.
In a new column, Dr. Drew Altman, KFF's Founding President and CEO, discusses how New Mexico made childcare universal and became the only state to fully replace lost enhanced ACA tax credits while its leaders avoided polarizing labels like “progressive or “socialist.”
With a Supreme Court decision on King v. Burwell looming, this Drew Altman column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank plays out the politics of a ruling for the two major parties.
The Kaiser Family Foundation held a media-only conference call with key experts on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), state marketplaces and more to explain the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the King v. Burwell case and to answer questions about its implications. The petitioners in the case are challenging the legality of premium and cost-sharing subsidies for low- and middle-income people buying health plans in 34 states where the federal government rather than the state…
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