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Section 1115 demonstration waivers provide states an avenue to test new approaches in Medicaid and generally reflect changing priorities from one presidential administration to another. This issue brief summarizes waiver priorities and actions under the Biden Administration as well as pending waiver themes and other issues to watch. If the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) fails to pass or is narrowed significantly, Medicaid waivers and other administrative actions may be a key tool for the Biden Administration to advance policy priorities absent legislation.

The Build Back Better Act (BBBA) includes a range of health and other proposals supported by President Biden, including a proposal to allow the federal government to negotiate the price of some prescription drugs covered under Medicare Part B (administered by physicians) and Medicare Part D (retail outpatient drugs). This brief illustrates the potential scope of the drug price negotiation proposal in the BBBA. This analysis is designed to highlight the types of Medicare-covered drugs that could be subject to negotiation, and which of the current top-spending drugs covered by Part B and Part D could be subject to price negotiation, and in what years, if the BBBA is enacted.

This brief describes the main sources of federal funding for hospitals and other health care providers during the pandemic, including how those funds have been allocated.

Delivery system and payment reform are dynamic and ever-evolving policy areas of state Medicaid programs; virtually every state has initiatives underway. This interactive is designed to provide users with an environmental scan of the activity.

Hispanic, Asian, and Black people are more likely than White people to live in households with more than four people, where not everyone will receive a free COVID-19 test from the federal government.

Less than a week after a new federal mandate to cover such products took effect, about half of the nation’s largest private insurers allow enrollees to directly obtain rapid at-home COVID-19 tests from specific sources without having to pay anything upfront, a new KFF analysis finds. The new coverage requirement…

As COVID cases have surged across the United States due to the new Omicron variant, the Biden Administration has stepped up efforts to expand testing capacity including by making at-home COVID tests more available.

This policy watch provides an early look at how top private insurers are implementing a new requirement to cover the cost of at-home COVID-19 tests. Initially about half offer a direct coverage option and half require an enrollee to pay upfront and then seek reimbursement.

An updated KFF analysis finds that counties that voted for Biden continue to have higher COVID-19 vaccination rates compared to counties that voted for Trump. As of January 11, 65% of those in Biden counties were fully vaccinated versus 52% of those in Trump counties. Even with the Omicron variant…

The new season of the “American Diagnosis” podcast will explore the impact of hundreds of years of adversity on the health of Indigenous peoples in America, examining the resilience of the Navajo Nation during the covid-19 pandemic as an entry point into this history. Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the…