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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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  • How Many Medicare Part D Enrollees Had High Out-of-Pocket Drug Costs in 2017?

    Issue Brief

    The Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit has helped improve the affordability of medications for people with Medicare. Yet Part D enrollees can face relatively high out-of-pocket costs because the Part D benefit does not have a hard cap on out-of-pocket spending. This analysis presents the latest data on out-of-pocket drug spending among Medicare Part D enrollees without low-income subsidies who have costs above the catastrophic coverage threshold.

  • Uwe Reinhardt’s New Book Priced Out: His Health Policy Ideas in Today’s Debates

    Event Date:
    Event

    Dr. Uwe Reinhardt is a giant in the health policy field who advised policymakers and influenced debates about the nation’s health system before his passing in 2017. His recently released last book, Priced Out: The Ethics and Economics of Health Care, completed by his wife and longtime collaborator Tsung-Mei (May) Cheng gives us the gift of further insights into the U.S. health system and many issues that the country is debating right now, ranging from health price…

  • The Silent Affordability Crisis Facing Sick People

    From Drew Altman

    In this Axios column, Drew Altman shows that employer coverage for lower wage workers is much worse than ACA marketplace coverage for similar populations. It’s a bigger problem we need to talk about more, he says.

  • “Deductible Relief Day” is May 19

    News Release

    Deductible Relief Day is May 19. That’s the date by which average spending for people with employer-sponsored health insurance is sufficient to satisfy the average deductible, the amount they must pay out-of-pocket for most health care services before their insurance plan kicks in to help pay the bills, KFF analysts explain in a new analysis. If you have not heard of Deductible Relief Day before, that is because we just invented it. But the issue…

  • Health Care Spending is More Than Just the Parts You See

    From Drew Altman

    In this Axios column, Drew Altman looks at total family spending for health including taxes and health benefits, and why people need to understand it to assess proposals like Medicare-for-All.

  • Short-Term Health Insurance Plans Charge Less than Half as Much in Premiums as ACA Plans By Excluding Pre-Existing Conditions and Severely Limiting Benefits

    News Release

    Short-term health insurance plans offer a trade-off for consumers: substantially lower premiums than plans that comply with the Affordable Care Act, but much less protection if they get sick and need care. Just how much cheaper are the premiums and what are consumers giving up to get them? A new KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) analysis finds short-term plans are able to charge premiums 54 percent lower than ACA-compliant plans, by excluding pre-existing conditions and severely…

  • The New Health Care Agenda: Gridlock, Lots of Hearings

    From Drew Altman

    In an Axios column, Drew Altman analyzes what the midterm election means for the health policy agenda between now and 2020--mostly political positioning and gridlock in Congress, with most of the action affecting people in the states. 

  • Some Can Get Marketplace Plans With No Premiums,Though With Higher Deductibles and Cost-Sharing

    News Release

    Many low-income consumers who are eligible for federal financial help under the Affordable Care Act can get a bronze-level plan and pay nothing out-of-pocket in premiums in more than 2,000 counties next year, depending on their annual income, according to a new analysis from KFF (the Kaiser Family Foundation). Such plans come with higher deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, however. The analysis finds that the ACA’s premium tax credits would cover the full premium of the lowest-cost bronze…

  • Voters Are Tuning Out the Health Care Debates

    From Drew Altman

    In this Axios column, Drew Altman reports on new KFF focus groups with voters. They show voters are focused on the problems they have paying for care and navigating the health system, but have yet to tune in on the health proposals being made by candidates and elected officials, and don’t see them as relevant to their problems. 

  • Visualizing Health Policy: Barriers to Care Experienced by Women in the United States 

    News Release

    This Visualizing Health Policy infographic looks at barriers to care experienced by women in the United States. Women incur greater health care costs than men, particularly during the reproductive years. Despite a lower uninsured rate than men (11% vs 14%), women are more likely to skip a recommended medical test or treatment due to cost. However, cost barriers to contraception have decreased for insured women since the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) coverage requirement took effect.…