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“...the search for a single top issue through polling questions — whether it’s health costs, or gas prices, or the cost of food — is artificial. People worry about and experience these costs together. There is no top issue, unless that issue is the catchall, ‘cost of living.’” — Drew Altman, KFF Founding President and CEO

Are Health Care Costs THE Top Issue for Voters?

In a new column, Dr. Drew Altman, Founding President and CEO, analyzes the polling on health costs as a voting issue and concludes that there is no one top voting issue. He writes: “I have come to the conclusion that the search for a single top issue through polling questions—whether it’s health costs, or gas prices, or the cost of food—is artificial. People worry about and experience these costs together. There is no top issue, unless that issue is the catchall, “cost of living.”

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How Unaffordable is Health Care and What Can We Do About It?

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On Tuesday, July 21, three experts joined Health Wonk Shop series moderator Larry Levitt in an hour-long discussion of health care affordability. During the discussion, panelists considered affordability from a variety of perspectives, including how to define affordability and the question of affordability for whom, how to measure it, and what can be done to address affordability and the underlying cost of health care.

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  • The Affordable Care Act After Six Years

    From Drew Altman

    In this column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman examines the role of the Affordable Care Act in the health system on its sixth anniversary, and how the hot debate about the law may have created an exaggerated impression of the good and the bad it can do.

  • A New Way of Measuring Health Costs Sheds Light on Recent Health Spending Trends

    Issue Brief

    National health spending started to grow more rapidly recently after several years of unusually slow growth. This analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis helps to dissect why that may be happening. Using recently-released disease-based health spending data compiled by the federal government, the analysis finds that the drivers of health spending growth shifted in the years following the Great Recession. The number of people treated for various diseases picked up,…

  • Visualizing Health Policy: Recent Trends in Prescription Drug Costs

    News Release

    This Visualizing Health Policy infographic spotlights national spending on prescription drugs and the public’s views on pharmaceutical prices. Prescription drug spending rose sharply in 2014, driven by growth in expenditures on specialty drugs, including medications to treat cancer and hepatitis C. Medicare’s spending on prescription pharmaceuticals also has risen, largely due to the addition of the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2006: between 2004 and 2014, the program’s share of US drug expenditures increased from…

  • Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: November 2016

    Feature

    The November Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, conducted one week after the 2016 presidential election, finds health care played a limited role in voters’ 2016 election decisions. While President-elect Trump and Republican lawmakers have made it clear that one of their top priorities is the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the survey finds Americans are divided on what they want to see lawmakers do to the health care law. This survey also finds that many…

  • Improving the Financial Accountability of Nursing Facilities

    Report

    This report examines nursing facility expenditures to assess relative spending increases in areas such as nursing services, administrative costs, and profits. Using California as a case study, it explores reimbursement by cost category and a standard medical loss ratio (MLR) as potential policy options to improve nursing facility financial accountability and care quality.

  • Annual Increase in National Health Expenditures and Their Share of Gross Domestic Product, 2001-2011

    Feature

    Annual Increase in National Health Expenditures and Their Share of Gross Domestic Product, 2001-2011 Download Source Kaiser Family Foundation calculations using NHE data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/ (see Historical; National Health Expenditures by type of service and source of funds, CY 1960-2011; file nhe2011.zip). Gross Domestic Product data from Bureau of Economic Analysis, at http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp (file gdplev.xls).

  • Annual Percent Change in National Health Expenditures, by Selected Sources of Funds, 1960-2011

    Feature

    Annual Percent Change in National Health Expenditures, by Selected Sources of Funds, 1960-2011 Download Source Kaiser Family Foundation calculations using NHE data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/ (see Historical; National Health Expenditures by type of service and source of funds, CY 1960-2011; file nhe2011.zip). 

  • Annual Percent Change in Private Health Insurance Expenditures Per Enrollee (Adjusted for Inflation), 1970-2011

    Feature

    Annual Percent Change in Private Health Insurance Expenditures Per Enrollee (Adjusted for Inflation), 1970-2011 Download Source Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/ (see Historical; NHE Web tables, Table 21), and CPI data from Bureau of Labor Statistics at ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt (All Urban Consumers, All Items, 1982-1984=100, Not Seasonally Adjusted, U.S. city average).