Access to Care

This Health Policy 101 chapter explores trends in health care costs in the U.S. and the factors that contribute to this spending. It also examines how health care spending varies across the population, the impact of costs on care affordability and individuals’ overall financial vulnerability.  

This analysis examines how people of color fare compared to White people across 64 measures of health, health care, and social determinants of health using the most recent data available from federal surveys and administrative sets as well as the 2023 KFF Survey on Racism, Discrimination, and Health.

This Health Policy 101 chapter explores LGBTQ+ people’s identities and demographics, their experiences with health and health care, including the significant disparities, and the related health policy landscape.

The U.S territories – American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) – have faced longstanding fiscal and health challenges exacerbated by recent emergencies. This issue brief provides background on how Medicaid financing differs between U.S. territories and states and what these differences mean for funding as well as health care coverage and access.

This Health Policy 101 chapter explores the performance of the U.S. health system on a number of cost, outcomes, and quality measures by comparing it with those in similarly large and wealthy OECD nations. It highlights that despite significant spending, Americans have shorter life expectancies and encounter more barriers to health care, influenced by both the health system’s structure and broader socioeconomic factors.