Home Health Costs Topics

Health Costs

The MIDTERMS

“...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.

Latest News

More KFF Health News

Stay informed.

Get KFF's latest on Health Costs

Stay informed.

Get KFF's latest on Health Costs

View the Latest: Health Costs

Filter

List Grid

791 - 800 of 1,600 Results

  • Chronic Disease Prevention: Saving Lives, Saving Money

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Alliance for Health Reform and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored a July 13 luncheon briefing to discuss whether or not public health investments can help prevent chronic disease and reduce escalating health care costs. For more information, please visit the Alliance's event page. Full version: Video   Speakers for this session: The panel was moderated by Ed Howard of the Alliance. Ursula Bauer, CDC National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion…

  • Pulling it Together: What Conservatives Are Winning

    Perspective

    Conservatives are out of sorts these days about the direction in which health care is headed. They think the new health reform law expands the role of government too much and spends too much at a time when they believe deficit reduction should be a higher priority. The claims about death panels and a government takeover of the health system aside, these are principled positions for conservatives to take – they are supposed to be…

  • Coping with Fragmented Payment in the Real World

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Alliance for Health Reform and The Commonwealth Fund sponsored this briefing which focused on three communities that have reformed and harmonized health care payments across payers to improve care: a New York health center that serves a low income population; a Colorado community that pools money from public and private sources to provide care for all patients; and the State of Maryland, which has been using an all payer hospital rate setting system for…

  • Patient Cost-Sharing Under the Affordable Care Act

    Report

    Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), four tiers of health insurance will be offered in the health insurance exchanges and throughout the individual and small group markets beginning in 2014. Under the minimum coverage plan, the “Bronze” plan, the insurance plan will pay for 60 percent of the costs of covered benefits on average while the individual enrolled will pay the remaining 40 percent in deductibles, copays and coinsurance. Individuals will have the option to…

  • Pulling it Together: The Sleeper in Health Reform

    Perspective

    The health reform legislation currently being crafted on Capitol Hill is undeniably complex.  To oversimplify slightly it can be boiled down into four parts: coverage (subsidies for private coverage and Medicaid expansions); delivery and payment reforms; insurance market reforms and regulations; and prevention, with each broad category containing a range of specific policy proposals and ideas. There’s been a lot of discussion so far about coverage expansions and how to pay for them, as well…

  • Assessing the Risk of Becoming Uninsured After Leaving a Job: A Look at the Data

    Fact Sheet

    This fact sheet examines the impact of unemployment on health insurance coverage by using data from 2004 to 2007 (before the current recession) to assess the increased risk of becoming uninsured among those who are no longer employed. It finds that more than one-third of individuals who stopped working and left a job that previously provided them with employer-sponsored health insurance became uninsured for six consecutive months or more after leaving their job. By comparison,…

  • Health Care Costs: The Role of Technology and Chronic Conditions

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Alliance for Health Reform and co-sponsors presented the second 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 takes an in-depth look at two of the most often cited cost drivers - technology and chronic conditions. For more information, please visit the Alliance's event page.   Full Video:   Part One  Part Two   The panel is moderated by…

  • The High and Rising Costs Of Health Care: What Can Be Done?

    Event Date:
    Event

    The Alliance for Health Reform, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and several cosponsors held the final 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 efforts to improve health and health care at lower…

  • Coverage of Colonoscopies Under the Affordable Care Act’s Prevention Benefit

    Report

    The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services such as colonoscopies without any patient cost-sharing. This report finds that confusion over whether colon cancer screenings are preventive care or treatment means patients sometimes receive unexpected bills for the procedure. The report examines cost-sharing practices for colorectal screenings through interviews with experts and officials in the medical and insurance industries. This report was co-authored by The Kaiser Family Foundation, American…

  • 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…