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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.”

New and noteworthy

How Unaffordable is Health Care and What Can We Do About It?

Event Date:

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.

Health System Tracker

Among adults 18 - 64 with private insurance, mental health and substance use treatment accounted for 10% of all overnight stays at hospitals or other medical facilities in 2023.

Cost and Utilization of Inpatient Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment This analysis describes the most common diagnoses for inpatient treatment and total associated costs.

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 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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  • Charges for Emails with Doctors and other Healthcare Providers

    Issue Brief

    Patient-provider email messaging accelerated early in the COVID-19 pandemic as more patients sought medical care remotely, and the addition of billing codes for digital health services and subsequent changes in insurers’ payment policies have enabled providers to bill insurers and patients for messaging. This analysis examines the typical cost of patient-provider email messaging in 2020 and 2021 using private health insurance claims data. The typical cost for an email messaging claim was $39 in 2021,…

  • 3 Charts: The Cost and Coverage of Opill—the First FDA-approved Over-the-Counter Daily Oral Contraceptive Pill in the United States 

    News Release

    The first FDA-approved over-the-counter daily oral contraceptive pill in the United States— Perrigo’s Opill— is now available for pre-order at major online retailers and will soon be available in stores. Although the new over-the-counter pill could broaden access to contraceptive options in the United States, KFF research suggests consumers are likely to face some hurdles if they seek to have their plan cover the costs. For example, while federal policy requires most private health insurance…

  • What resources are available for privately insured patients who get surprise balance bills?

    Issue Brief

    Most patients do not know about the new surprise billing protections and likely also do not know of resources available to seek recourse for incorrect medical bills. This brief provides resources to privately insured patients who receive surprise balance bills and also summarizes relevant policies and how they apply to balance billing.

  • Medical Debt: The Canary in the Coal Mine for Health Care Affordability

    Perspective

    With Vice President Harris promising to address medical debt as part of her economic plan, KFF Executive Vice President for Health Policy Larry Levitt explores why it is a symptom of the broader problem of affordable health care and reviews recent efforts to address it in this JAMA Health Forum post.

  • Harris is Reframing Health as an Economic Issue

    From Drew Altman

    In his latest column, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman describes how Vice President Harris has reframed health as a pocketbook economic issue, which aligns with voters’ concern about health care costs.

  • Allowing Medicare to Negotiate Drug Prices Remains Broadly Popular Among Voters, Though Most Are Unaware of the Law and Its Projected Savings

    News Release

    Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices on behalf of older Americans remains broadly popular across partisans, though many voters are unaware of the new law and the billions of dollars it is expected to save in 2026, a new KFF Health Tracking Poll finds.A large majority (85%) of voters say they support allowing the federal government to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs for people with Medicare. This includes at least three quarters of…

  • Why Do We Hear More About High Drug Prices Than About Hospital Prices?

    Perspective

    In this JAMA Health Forum post, KFF's Larry Levitt outlines four reasons why high drug prices are in the spotlight more than hospital prices, even though hospitals accounted for 40% of the growth in national health spending from 2022 to 2024, and explores the potential for policy action to restrain them.

  • The Rubber is About to Hit the Road on Medicaid Cuts

    Quick Insights

    Once Republicans in Congress get specific about Medicaid cuts, it will become more tangible and clearer who will be affected. Changes to the status quo in health care rarely get more popular when the details get filled in.

  • Copay Adjustment Programs: What Are They and What Do They Mean for Consumers?

    Issue Brief

    Drug makers sometimes offer copay coupons to lower consumers’ out-of-pocket costs for their brand-name prescriptions, though how private health plans treat those coupons can substantially limit their value to consumers. This issue brief provides an overview of such copay adjustment programs, stakeholder arguments for and against their use, their prevalence, and federal and state efforts to address them.