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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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  • Outpatient Visits Are Growing More Complex: Implications for Health Costs

    Issue Brief

    This analysis for the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker uses claims data from private, large employer-based plan to examine trends in complexity coding across outpatient practice settings from 2004 to 2021. It finds a trend toward higher complexity codes that contributes to higher outpatient spending.

  • National and State Analysis of the Role of Health Care and Abortion in the Midterm Available through KFF Online Dashboard

    News Release

    Supplemental KFF Questions Added to AP VoteCast Survey Provide Deeper Insight About the Impact of Abortion and Health Care Issues Health Care Costs Were Among Economic Concerns for Voters Motivated by Inflation, and Abortion Was a Motivating Factor for Many Democratic Voters and Women Inflation was widely expected to be the driving issue for voters on Election Day, and poll results bear this out. However, beyond inflation, seven in ten voters said the Supreme Court’s…

  • Few Adults Are Aware of Hospital Price Transparency Requirements

    Issue Brief

    This data note for the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker shows that few Americans realize that starting this year hospitals are required to post prices of common health services on their websites in a format patients can access and use.

  • Webinar: How Might the Pandemic Affect Health Premiums, Utilization, and Outcomes in 2021 and Beyond?

    Event Date:
    Event

    As the coronavirus pandemic enters its eighth month, we are still facing uncertainty about what the long-term impact of the crisis will be for the health sector, and for patients. However, the extent to which costs grow, and how the burden is distributed across payers, programs, individuals, outcomes, and geography are still very much unknown. On Monday, October 19, KFF held a webinar on the outlook for the U.S. health system in light of the…

  • A Look at People Who Have Persistently High Spending on Health Care

    Issue Brief

    This analysis looks at the amounts and types of health spending for people with employer-based health insurance who have continuing high health care spending. It finds that, among people with three consecutive years of coverage from a large employer, just 1.3 percent of enrollees accounted for almost 20 percent of overall spending in 2017. This group – people in the top five percent of spending in each of the three years from 2015 to 2017…

  • Among People with Employer Coverage, Those with Persistently High Spending for Several Years Averaged Almost $88,000 in Health Spending in 2017    

    News Release

    Among people with three consecutive years of coverage from a large employer, just 1.3 percent of enrollees accounted for 19.5 percent of overall health spending in 2017, finds a new KFF analysis. These “people with persistently high spending” – people in the top five percent of spending in each of the three years from 2015 to 2017 – had average health spending of $87,870 in 2017. That compared to average per person spending of $5,870…

  • 2019 Premium Changes on ACA Exchanges

    Issue Brief

    This tracker monitors preliminary 2019 premiums in the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces as insurers file rate information with state regulators. It shows preliminary premium information in a major city in each available state for the lowest-cost bronze plan and “benchmark” silver plan, which is used to determine the size of the premium tax credits available to low- and moderate-income enrollees. The tracker also shows how those premiums are changing from 2018 and what a 40-year-old…

  • Unpacking the Prescription Drug Provisions of the Build Back Better Act

    Event Date:
    Event

    As the Build Back Better Act shifts from the House to the Senate, there’s considerable interest in provisions that would lower the cost of prescription drugs. The House-passed bill would allow the federal government to negotiate prices for some high-cost drugs in Medicare, and set a hard cap on out-of-pocket drug spending for Medicare Part D enrollees.  For people with Medicare and private insurance, the legislation would limit annual increases in drug prices and cap…