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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.”

Health System Tracker

Small Businesses Could See Double-Digit Premium Increases in 2027, According to Insurers’ Preliminary Rate Filings

Nearly 300 insurers offering offering health coverage to small businesses reported a median proposed premium increase of 14% for next year, according to an analysis of preliminary rate filings from all 50 states and DC.

ACA Marketplace Insurers Are Proposing a Median Premium Increase of About 15% in 2027

ACA Marketplaces insurers are proposing a median premium increase of 15% in 2027, according to an updated analysis of 276 insurers with publicly available filings across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

In 2024, life expectancy in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 79 years but remained years behind the average in comparable countries

Life expectancy at birth in the U.S. increased 0.6 years from 78.4 years in 2023 to 79.0 years in 2024, its highest-ever level. However, the average life expectancy in comparable countries was about 3.7 years longer than in the U.S.

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.

Using claims data from the 2023 Merative MarketScan Commercial Claims Database, this analysis describes the most common diagnoses for inpatient treatment and total associated costs, including patients’ out-of-pocket share.

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.

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  • Congressional Testimony on Expanding Health Care Coverage

    Event Date:
    Event

    On May 5, 2009, the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance held a roundtable discussion on health-care coverage issues as part of its health reform efforts. Diane Rowland, the Foundation's Executive Vice President and Executive Director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, and Gary Claxton, Foundation Vice President and Director of the Health Care Marketplace Project, participated in the discussion and prepared written testimony at the committee's request. Testimony of Diane Rowland (.pdf)…

  • 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…

  • New Report Looks at Health Care Trends in California Compared to Rest of Nation

    Report

    A new chartbook by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that on most, though not all indicators, California's health care system fares poorly when compared to the U.S. as a whole. The report, Health Care Trends and Indicators in California and the United States, shows that many more Californians have no health insurance than in the rest of the U.S., but when they do have insurance it tends to be more comprehensive and cost less than…

  • Coverage and Cost Impacts of the President’s Health Insurance Tax Credit and Tax Deduction Proposals

    Issue Brief

    This issue brief looks at the coverage impacts and costs of two components of the administration’s FY 2005 budget proposals to increase the affordability of health insurance: a new tax credit for people purchasing non-group health insurance and a new tax deduction for premiums for high-deductible, non-group health insurance policies. The estimates were prepared by Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D., Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, using a micro-simulation model developed in conjunction with…

  • Annual Increase in National Health Expenditures and Their Share of Gross Domestic Product, 2002-2012

    Feature

    Annual Increase in National Health Expenditures and Their Share of Gross Domestic Product, 2002-2012-HEALTHCOSTS Download Source Kaiser Family Foundation calculations using NHE data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/ (see Historical; National Health Expenditures by type of service and source of funds, CY 1960-2012; file nhe2012.zip). Gross Domestic Product data from Bureau of Economic Analysis, at http://bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp (file gdplev.xls). 

  • Average Annual Percent Change in National Health Expenditures, 1960-2012

    Feature

    Average Annual Percent Change in National Health Expenditures, 1960-2012-HEALTHCOSTS Download Source Kaiser Family Foundation calculations using NHE data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/ (see Historical; National Health Expenditures by type of service and source of funds, CY 1960-2012; file nhe2012.zip). 

  • Percent Distribution of National Health Expenditures, by Source of Funds, 1960-2012

    Feature

    Percent Distribution of National Health Expenditures, by Source of Funds, 1960-2012-HEALTHCOSTS Download Source Kaiser Family Foundation calculations using NHE data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/ (see Historical; National Health Expenditures by type of service and source of funds, CY 1960-2012; file nhe2012.zip). 

  • Projections of National Health Expenditures and Their Share of Gross Domestic Product, 2013-2023

    Feature

    Projections of National Health Expenditures and Their Share of Gross Domestic Product, 2013-2023-HEALTHCOSTS Download Source Kaiser Family Foundation calculations using NHE data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group, at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/ (see Projected; NHE Historical and projections, 1965-2023, file nhe65-23.zip).