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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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  • Medicare Consumer-Directed Health Plan: Medicare MSAs and HSA-like Plans in 2007

    Issue Brief

    Medicare Consumer-Directed Health Plan: Medicare MSAs and HSA-like Plans in 2007 This March 2007 issue brief, commissioned by the Kaiser Family Foundation, examines the development of consumer-directed health plans in the Medicare program. Medicare Medical Savings Account plans have high deductibles accompanied by a personal savings account that can be used to pay for medical expenses. The paper examines how such plans operate in Medicare, how they differ from other types of Medicare Advantage plans…

  • Maternity Care and Consumer Driven Health Plans

    Event Date:
    Event

    Maternity Care and Consumer-Driven Health Plans With maternity care representing one of the most common and costly medical interventions that women experience, Kaiser and the March of Dimes co-hosted a forum to release new studies that analyze the costs of maternity care and assess coverage under consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs). Kaiser released a new study that compares the out-of-pocket costs of maternity care under CDHPs and traditional health insurance plans. The March of Dimes released…

  • Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Election 2008 — April 2008

    Poll Finding

    An April 2008 poll finds that health care costs rank among Americans’ top personal economic problems, and their struggles to deal with those costs have affected both their financial well-being and their family’s health care.  Conducted by the Foundation’s public opinion researchers, the poll probes into the economic concerns facing Americans and the ways they have dealt with the cost of health care. Across a series of economic concerns, health care costs rank near the…

  • Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Election 2008 – June 2008

    Poll Finding

    The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Election 2008 poll finds that the recent economic downturn continues to create serious financial problems for most Americans. When asked about the impact of recent economic changes, nearly six in 10 adults (59 percent) report having a "serious problem" with one of seven major financial issues, including one in four who cite paying for health care as a serious problem. Not surprisingly, with gas prices topping $4 per gallon…

  • Pulling It Together: Jobs, A Reason to Fast Track Coverage

    Perspective

    The two big topics in Washington right now are the economy and health care.  I've written before about how the two are linked, and in particular about how among the everyday economic problems people are having, paying for health care is a big one. But the latest numbers out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show there is another link: Health care is one of the few relatively healthy parts of our unhealthy economy right now. Since…

  • Pulling it Together: The “Third School” for Controlling Health Care Costs?

    Perspective

    For as long as I have been in the field, there have been two dominant schools of thought about how to control health care costs. One school, The Regulators, believed that the best way to slow increasing costs was to control the total resources going into the health care system: putting limits on the supply of medical professionals, technology and facilities; setting payment rates; or putting enough purchasing power in the hands of government to…

  • Summary of Coverage Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

    Issue Brief

    This short summary describes the health coverage provisions contained in the final version of the Affordable Care Act signed into law in March 2010, including the individual mandate requirements, expansion of public programs, health insurance exchanges, changes to private insurance and employer requirements.

  • Health Affairs Article: The Growth In Cost Per Case Explains Far More Of US Health Spending Increases Than Rising Disease Prevalence

    Report

    Health Affairs Article: The Growth In Cost Per Case Explains Far More Of U.S. Health Spending Increases Than Rising Disease Prevalence This article examines national health spending across an all-inclusive set of diagnostic categories and medical conditions between 1996 and 2006, focusing on trends in cost of care per case and treated prevalence—or, the number of people receiving treatment for a particular condition. It also presents initial estimates of the impact of clinical prevalence on…

  • 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…

  • Health Care Costs in the U.S.: The Role of Prices and Volume

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Alliance for Health Reform and several cosponsors held the first event in a three-part series of discussions on costs, the factors driving them up and what (if anything) can be done about them. This briefing and others in the series take an in-depth look at a select few of the most often cited health care cost drivers. This briefing focuses on the extent to which health care prices, and the volume of services delivered,…