Category: prices

Make American Health Care Affordable Again

In this JAMA Health Forum column, Larry Levitt highlights how the Make America Healthy Again agenda aimed at chronic disease does little to address the affordability of health care and that efforts to lower federal spending on health care may worsen th…

The Performance of the Federal Independent Dispute Resolution Process through Mid-2024

The No Surprises Act, which was signed into law by President Trump during his first term and took effect in 2022, aims to protect consumers from certain surprise medical bills. The law established processes to keep the patient out of the payment negoti…

Health Spending Issues to Watch This Year

KFF and the Peterson Center on Healthcare examine market trends contributing to rising health costs and identify several potential federal and state policy issues to watch throughout 2025, including high-cost drugs, federal funding cuts, and workforce …

Challenges with Effective Price Transparency Analyses

Promoting price transparency in health care is a policy approach with bi-partisan support in Congress and the public at large. This analysis examines the vast troves of price transparency data that payers are required and finds unlikely prices, inconsi…

Key Facts About Hospitals

This analysis presents key facts about hospitals with more than 40 charts related to national spending on hospital care, characteristics of the hospital industry, rural hospitals, use of hospital care, out-of-pocket spending and medical debt, hospital …

KFF Health Tracking Poll: Public Weighs Health Care Spending and Other Priorities for Incoming Administration

With the incoming Trump administration and Republican-led Congress looking to ways to reduce federal spending, this Poll finds that the Medicare and Medicaid programs remain broadly popular, and more people favor more spending on those programs than le…

How Medicare Negotiated Drug Prices Compare to Other Countries

This analysis finds that Medicare’s negotiated prices for 10 high-expenditure prescription drugs are lower than what private Medicare drug plans had been paying, but still much higher than the prices available in 11 other wealthy nations.. It is availa…

One or Two Health Systems Controlled the Entire Market for Inpatient Hospital Care in Nearly Half of Metropolitan Areas in 2022

This analysis examines the competitiveness of markets for hospital care based on the share of metropolitan areas controlled by a small number of independent hospitals or health systems and other measures. It finds that nearly half of metropolitan areas…

Nearly Half of Metro Areas Have Only One or Two Hospitals or Health Systems Providing Inpatient Care

Nearly half (47%) of metropolitan areas across the country had only one or two hospitals or health systems providing general inpatient hospital care in 2022, a new KFF analysis finds. The analysis examines the extent of competition among hospitals amid…

How Many People with Employer-Sponsored Insurance Use the Drugs Slated for Medicare Price Negotiations

Among the 167 million people with employer-sponsored insurance in 2022, 3.4 million used at least one of the first 10 drugs identified for Medicare price negotiations, according to a new analysis. The most used drug for people with employer-sponsored h…