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COSTS and Affordability

KFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs and the Midterms

This KFF poll finds that health care costs continue to top the public’s list of affordability worries, even as concerns about gas prices have risen in recent weeks, with two-thirds of the public expressing worry over affording health care costs. Majorities say health costs will influence their vote this election. Voters favor Democrats on the issue, while Republicans hold an advantage on addressing fraud and abuse.

Affordable care act

ACA Marketplace Survey Feature Image - Website

Cost Concerns and Coverage Changes: A Follow-Up Survey of ACA Marketplace Enrollees

This KFF survey is a follow-up survey of adults who had ACA Marketplace insurance in 2025. The survey examines the cost concerns and coverage changes of Marketplace enrollees following the end of the enhanced premium tax credits and finds that half of returning enrollees say their health care costs are “a lot higher” and most expect to cut back on basic household expenses to afford coverage.

Health System Tracker

What Are the Recent Trends in Employer-Based Health Coverage? Employer-sponsored health insurance is the largest source of health coverage for people under 65, but its reach is uneven.

How Does U.S. Life Expectancy Compare to Other Countries? The life expectancy gap between the U.S. and peer countries decreased from 4.1 years in 2023 to 3.7 years in 2024 as U.S. mortality dropped.

How Does Cost Affect Access to Health Care? In 2024, about 1 in 6 adults reported delaying or not getting healthcare due to cost, including medical or mental health care.

How Does Health Spending in the U.S. Compare to Other Countries? While the U.S. still spends the most in total dollars, eight OECD nations had a higher percentage increase in per-person health spending in 2024.

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  • Quality Care for Less Money: Can Regional Successes Go National?

    Event Date:
    Event

    On February 15, the Kaiser Family Foundation hosted an event featuring a PBS documentary with former Washington Post correspondent T.R. Reid – U.S. Health Care: The Good News – which explores efforts to provide low-cost, quality health care in the U.S. The film looks at variations in health spending across the country and showcases efficient health care delivery systems, like Grand Junction in Colorado and Group Health in Seattle, suggesting that these communities demonstrate that…

  • Pulling it Together: 2012: The ACA, and More

    From Drew Altman

    What is remarkable about 2012 (and the current era in health policy) is how many big health policy issues and marketplace changes will be in play at the same time: HEALTH REFORM: There is the implementation of a historic but fragile health reform law, with a Supreme Court decision pending and so much hanging in the balance. MEDICARE AND MEDICAID: There are continuing debates about potentially big changes in Medicare and Medicaid, driven by the…

  • Health Affairs Article: Medicaid Expansion Under Health Reform May Increase Service Use and Improve Access For Low-Income Adults With Diabetes

    Issue Brief

    This analysis finds that Medicaid’s role in financing diabetes care will grow when many low-income uninsured people with diabetes become eligible for Medicaid as the program expansions under the Affordable Care Act in 2014. Adult Medicaid beneficiaries with diabetes had annual per person health expenditures more than three times higher than adult beneficiaries without the disease -- $14,229 versus $4,568, according to the study. At the same time, many uninsured adults with diabetes are less…

  • Nursing Labor Markets Tutorial

    Interactive

    This tutorial was produced for kaiserEDU.org, a Kaiser Family Foundation website that ceased production in September 2013. The kaiserEDU.org tutorials are no longer being updated but have been made available on kff.org due to demand by professors who are using the tutorials in class assignments. You may search for other tutorials to view on kff.org. To download this or other tutorials, visit the tutorials archive page.  Slides are available for download using the "Download Slides" link within the…

  • 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…

  • Inside Deficit Reduction: What Now?

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Budget Control Act of 2011 tasked members of a "Super Committee" to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. Members did not reach an agreement by the November 23 deadline and as a result automatic spending cuts to defense and entitlement programs are set to kick in beginning in January 2013. Panelists at this briefing discussed the impact the sequester will have on the health care sector and how…

  • Snapshots: Compensation for Workers with & without Access to Health Benefits at Work

    Issue Brief

    This paper compares the payroll and benefit compensation of workers that had access to employer-sponsored health benefits at work to that of workers who did not have an insurance offer. Surveys of employers indicate that smaller and lower wage firms are less likely to offer health benefits to workers, but do not provide detailed information about wage and benefit differences for workers with and without an offer of health benefits working in different settings.1 In this Snapshot,…

  • Webcast: New CMS Estimates of State-by-State Health Expenditures

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Kaiser Family Foundation held a live interactive webcast on December 7, 2011, to discuss trends in state health care expenditures and the implications for national and state efforts to constrain health care costs. The webcast examines new state-by-state estimates of public and private health spending from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published in the online journal, Medicare and Medicaid Research Review. An expert panel offers perspectives on the trends within and…

  • Pulling it Together: The Most Popular Provision in the ACA?

    Perspective

    In our most recent monthly tracking poll, we asked the American people what elements of the health reform law they like and dislike. Surprisingly, the runaway favorite was a relatively obscure requirement that health plans provide consumers with a short, easy to understand description of their benefits and coverage. Sixty percent of the American people gave this requirement for greater transparency in health insurance benefits a very favorable rating, the only provision in the law…

  • The Economy and Medical Care

    Perspective

    Various market watchers have reported that the use of health care services has not been growing recently as it had in the past, resulting in lower than expected health care claims for people with private insurance and higher than expected earnings for insurers. A look at physician office visits by nonelderly patients with private insurance over the past decade illustrates the change in the use of services (See the chart below). (This analysis was prepared…