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KFF’s policy research provides facts and analysis on a wide range of policy issues and public programs.
KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
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State Health Facts is a KFF project that provides free, up-to-date, and easy-to-use health data for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the United States. It offers data on specific types of health insurance coverage, including employer-sponsored, Medicaid, Medicare, as well as people who are uninsured by demographic characteristics, including age, race/ethnicity, work status, gender, and income. There are also data on health insurance status for a state's population overall and broken down by age, gender, and income.
This report examines the characteristics of health centers that serve an unusually high rate of uninsured patients. It explores what external factors influence uninsured patients to seek care at these centers and assesses the impact of a disproportionately high volume of uninsured patients on these centers' finances and operations. Report
This report addresses national managed care firms participation in M+C and the factors influencing their decision processes about M+C products. Based on interviews with executives and senior staff of national managed care firms, this report examines how eight national firms strategically position their M+C product, including the process that firms use when making decisions and the key factors they say most influence their decisions related to participation. Report
Estimates are that there are approximately 630,000 people who are homeless on any given night in the U.S. -- about two-thirds in shelters and one-third on the street or without real shelter. Several million people are estimated to experience homelessness over the course of a year. About two-thirds are individuals and the balance are in families. These numbers are virtually identical to national estimates we used when I worked intensively on the issue of homelessness in the…
A central goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to significantly reduce the number of uninsured by providing a continuum of affordable coverage options through Medicaid and new Health Insurance Exchanges. Following the June 2012 Supreme Court decision, states face a decision about whether to adopt the Medicaid expansion. These decisions will have enormous consequences for health coverage for the low-income population. This analysis uses the Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Policy…
Diane Rowland, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation and executive director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, testified to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress on health insurance coverage and how the uninsured population remains one of the nation's most pressing health care challenges. Testimony (.pdf)
This background report analyzes 2001 U.S. Census Bureau data on health coverage to determine the trends that led to 1.4 million people losing health coverage from 2000 to 2001. Report
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.
This side-by-side provides a comparison of Medicare current law with selected House and Senate provisions to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Report Report
This analysis finds that recent waivers have expanded coverage in important ways in a few states, but, overall, the number of people who have gained new coverage under recent waivers has been quite limited, well below projections and small compared to overall growth in Medicaid enrollment. Issue Paper (.pdf)
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