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Democrats Hold a Nearly 2-to-1 Advantage Over Republicans on Handling the Cost of Health Care

Poll: Cost of Health Care and Gas Top Voters’ Midterm Concerns; Democrats Hold Significant Advantage on Health Care Costs and Cost of Living 

With the 2026 midterms about a month away, health care costs remain tied with gas as voters’ top midterm concerns and the Democrats hold a clear edge over the Republicans Party on who voters trust to handle many top electoral issues, including the cost of health care and the cost of living. Two-thirds of U.S. adults now favor Medicare-for-all, a new high in KFF Polling, but support shifts when competing claims from critics and proponents are heard.

New and noteworthy

Americans’ Challenges with Health Care Costs

This data note reviews our recent polling data that finds that many Americans struggle to afford many aspects of health care, including disproportionate shares of uninsured adults, Black and Hispanic adults and those with lower incomes.

Health System Tracker

U.S. Health Spending Is Expected to Reach $9 Trillion by 2034

How Much is Health Spending Expected to Grow?

This chart collection explores how much health spending is expected to grow in the coming years, with a look at growth in prescription drug spending, out-of-pocket spending, and related trends.

Is This A Healthcare Economy?

Health care employment has grown faster than other sectors of the economy, with jobs in physician offices, hospitals, outpatient care centers, home health, and other settings increasing over the past year even as the rest of the job market plateaued. 

How TrumpRx Brand-Name Drug Prices Compare

TrumpRx prices for brand-name drugs are about as likely to be higher as lower compared to average prices in other wealthy countries, according to an analysis that compares 32 brand-name drugs.

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  • The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Program Design, Recent Performance and Implications for Medicare Reform

    Report

    This report provides a basic description of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program's (FEHBP) structure, benefits, financing, and operations. The report also assesses FEHBP's recent performance in a variety of areas, including cost increases, benefit changes, access to providers, and risk selection. It concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the FEHBP experience for Medicare reform proposals. Report Speaker Presentation (Merlis) Webcast of briefing

  • Medicare Cost-Sharing: Implications for Beneficiaries

    Event Date:
    Event

    Tricia Neuman, Vice President and Director of the Medicare Policy Project, testified on behalf of herself and Thomas Rice, Ph.D., of UCLA's School of Public Health, before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health on cost-sharing requirements under Medicare and supplemental Medigap policies. The statement reviews Medicare beneficiaries' current cost-sharing responsibilities, the evidence on the impact of out-of-pocket costs on health-care utilization, and the implications for proposals that would modify Medicare's cost-sharing structure.

  • How Do M+C Plans Manage Pharmacy Benefits? Implications for Medicare Reform

    Report

    Understanding how Medicare+Choice (M+C) plans manage their drug benefits may generate important lessons for Medicare. This report, based on interviews with both national and regional managed care firms, provides an in-depth look at how plans have managed their M+C outpatient pharmacy benefits in recent years. Findings show that plans rely on a number of cost management strategies to constrain the growth in drug spending including formularies, tiered-copayments, mail-order benefits, and fixed caps or dollar limits…

  • The Development of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Regulation

    Other Post

    This article, which appears in the Food and Drug Law Journal, vol. 57, no. 3, 2002, pp. 423-444 was based on a report written by F.B. Palumbo and C.D. Mullins at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy Center on Drugs and Public Policy and funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The article provides an historical overview and current U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation of advertising prescription drugs directly to consumers. The article also…

  • Regulation of Private Long-Term Care Insurance: Implementation Experience and Key Issues

    Report

    Regulation of Private Long-Term Care Insurance: Implementation Experience and Key Issues While private long-term care insurance (LTCI) has been available since the mid-1970s, its popularity has grown rapidly in recent years, and Congress is considering proposals that would further encourage LTCI purchase through expanded tax subsidies. Yet there has been little research on how well LTCI works and how much security it really provides. This report focuses on consumer protections for individuals buying LTCI in…

  • Private Long-Term Care Insurance:  Who Should Buy It and What Should They Buy?

    Report

    Private Long-Term Care Insurance: Who Should Buy It and What Should They Buy? Despite the growing interest in private long-term care insurance (LTCI), there has been little independent examination of how much protection LTCI policies provide consumers or whether LTCI policies are a worthwhile purchase for people of average means. This report draws on data from the 1998 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the 1996 Medical Expenditures Panel Survey (MEPS) to explore the feasibility…

  • Paying for Choice: The Cost Implications of Health Plan Options For People on Medicare

    Report

    This report illustrates the financial stakes for Medicare beneficiaries when making choices about supplemental insurance coverage, by examining how much people on Medicare could spend out-of-pocket including premiums and other cost-sharing requirements under different supplemental insurance options. To assess the cost implications of choosing between different Medigap and Medicare+Choice insurance options, the research team estimated the range in health care expenditures associated with three prototypical beneficiaries (a 50 year-old man with disabilities, a relatively healthy…

  • A Guide to Developing Assistance Programs for Health Care Consumers

    Report

    The Health Rights Hotline, based in Sacramento, California, wasestablished in 1997 as a model to demonstrate and assess how anindependent assistance program can help consumers successfully accesscare, navigate the health care system, and improve the system for allhealth care consumers. Based on the experiences of the Health Rights Hotline, this Guideprovides a framework and specific steps that organizations may take to set up a consumer assistance program. Areas covered include program design, staffing and training,…

  • The Current State of Retiree Health Benefits: Findings from the Kaiser/Hewitt 2002 Retiree Health Survey

    Other Post

    The Current State of Retiree Health Benefits: Findings from the Kaiser/Hewitt 2002 Retiree Health Survey This report presents findings from a study of large private-sector employers conducted by researchers at Hewitt Associates and the Kaiser Family Foundation between July and September of 2002. The study is based on survey responses of 435 large private-sector firms (1,000+ employees) that currently offer retiree health benefits, and includes 36% of all Fortune 100 companies and 28% of all…

  • Comparisons of the Liability Provisions of the House and Senate Patients’ Rights Bills

    Report

    A hotly debated issue in Congress has been the issue of when health maintenance organizations, health insurers, and those who administer health benefit plans should be financially liable to their plan participants for a denial of a claim or for damages for any injuries that result from such denials (known as health plan liability ). This new report by Gary Claxton of the Georgetown Institute for Health Care Research and Policy describes the health plan…