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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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  • Percent Annual Increase in National Health Expenditures (NHE) per Capita vs. Increase in Consumer Price Index (CPI), 1980-2011

    Feature

    Percent Annual Increase in National Health Expenditures (NHE) per Capita vs. Increase in Consumer Price Index (CPI), 1980-2011 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; file nhe11.zip), 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,…

  • Peering Into the Black Box of Insurance Rating

    Perspective

    Recently, the New York Times reported that private health insurers continue to seek large premium increases despite seeing lower than expected use of medical care and booking record profits. The story highlights a significant problem for health policy: the lack of good, public information about how health insurers manage health care use and what they pay for medical services. As a nation, we rely on competition among largely private health plans to ensure that health…

  • July Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Public Still Divided on ACA, Few Believe the Law Will Improve Consumer Protections

    Perspective

    Overall public opinion on the health reform law remains unchanged this month, with 42 percent of Americans holding a favorable view and 43 percent an unfavorable view. Even though previous Health Tracking polls have consistently shown that consumer protections were one of the least controversial and most widely supported provisions of the health reform law, the July poll finds that just one in five Americans think the law will lead to improvements in consumer protections…

  • Kaiser December Tracking Poll: Public Remains Divided on Health Reform Law; Significant Number of People Struggle Financially

    Perspective

    As 2010 draws to a close, the latest tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows the public still divided in their views of the health reform law, a sentiment largely unchanged since the law’s enactment in March. Forty-two percent of Americans say they have a generally favorable view of the law, while 41 percent have a generally unfavorable view of it. As the weak economy continues, the survey finds that a significant number of…

  • Kaiser Health Tracking Poll — December 2011

    Poll Finding

    The October downturn in the share of Americans with a favorable view of the health reform law, a dip driven by an erosion of support among Democrats, has been fully reversed in December, with support among Democrats rebounding and overall national opinion on the law returning to the roughly even split seen in Kaiser polls for most of 2011.  The concept of health exchanges, a key piece of the law, has wide, bipartisan support.  The…

  • How Have Costs Associated With Obesity Changed Over Time?

    Issue Brief

    This analysis finds that, among people with large employer health plans, those with an obesity diagnosis on average have higher total and out-of-pocket spending than those without an obesity diagnosis. It also examines the cost of common surgical and pharmacological treatments for obesity. 

  • How Do Facility Fees Contribute To Rising Emergency Department Costs?

    Issue Brief

    With the high costs of emergency department visits of significant importance to consumers and policymakers, this analysis examines claims data from privately insured individuals with large employer health plans, to examine the role that facility fees play in rising cost of emergency care.