Health Costs

A key element in any comprehensive health reform plan is defining what health insurance is and the amount of insurance coverage people will have. There are two components to that coverage: the types of services covered (e.g., physician care, hospitalization, prescription drugs, etc.), and the cost sharing required of enrollees…

There is lots of apocalyptic talk these days about the collapse of the newspaper industry and the challenges facing news organizations.  There is even talk of the unimaginable, my hometown paper The Boston Globe shutting down. Surely they know that Red Sox Nation cannot exist without the Globe Sports pages.…

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…

On March 30, 2009, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued the 2010 “call letter,” which functions as a request for proposals to private health insurers and organizations that want to sponsor Medicare Advantage Plans or Medicare Prescription Drug Plans. This issue brief reviews the call letter — the first issued…

Several years ago Joanne Silberner from NPR offered some advice I liked. Joanne said that the secret to effective communication was to “have a killer anecdote and a killer number.” Here is a killer number: 19.7. That’s the average number of years between major attempts at health reform since Harry…

This document contains the key findings from the April Health Tracking Poll. The survey was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and was conducted April 2 through April 8, 2009, among a nationally representative random sample of 1,203 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone…

This document contains the toplines from the April Health Tracking Poll. The survey was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and was conducted April 2 through April 8, 2009, among a nationally representative random sample of 1,203 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone interviews…

This document contains the chartpack from the April Health Tracking Poll. The survey was designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and was conducted April 2 through April 8, 2009, among a nationally representative random sample of 1,203 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone interviews…

These toplines from a survey by NPR and researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health highlight the public’s attitudes and experiences with the American health care delivery system. The new survey sheds light on Americans’ experiences with issues more typically discussed by health policy…

This fact sheet on health care costs presents key statistics about the growth, level and impact of rising U.S. health care costs. It covers spending on various medical services, sources of health spending, employer-sponsored health coverage and the impact on businesses and people. Fact Sheet (.pdf)