This brief explains the role and implications of cross-market mergers between hospitals and health systems that operate in different regions and describes the approaches that government antitrust agencies have taken in reviewing these types of transact…
Rural hospitals fared worse financially in states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act than in states that expanded Medicaid, a new KFF analysis finds. Nearly one third of all rural hospitals nationally are in th…
This data note examines rural hospitals’ operating margins in recent years. After seeing higher margins early in the pandemic, likely due to government relief funds, rural hospitals now face renewed challenges, especially in states that have not expand…
This chart collection compares health care spending in the U.S. and other industrialized countries, including data on health spending per person and the growth rate in recent years and over time.
This slideshow examines trends in U.S. health spending over time, including the share of household budgets devoted to health expenses and comparisons of out-of-pocket expenditures to money spent on insurance through 2021.
This slideshow examines how cost and insurance affects people’s access to care, including decisions to forgo or delay needed care and access to a usual source of care.
The Health Spending Explorer on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker helps users examine five decades worth of numbers documenting expenditures by federal and local governments, private insurers, and individuals on 15 categories of health services, i…
The analysis finds that life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 2.7 years from 2019 to 2021, whereas in peer countries’ life expectancies fell by an average of just 0.2 years in this period. COVID-19 has erased two decades of life expectancy growth in the …
Despite higher inflation and dwindling COVID-19 relief funding from the federal government, the nation’s largest for-profit health systems so far this year have operating margins that meet or exceed levels in 2019 prior to the pandemic, a new KFF analy…
This data note examines the financial performance of the three largest for-profit hospital systems in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. All three health systems have had positive operating margins that have exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the ma…
