Healthcare Reform

This Issue Brief investigates how health insurance coverage, as well as healthcare access and affordability, has changed in recent years, with an emphasis on policies implemented from 2021 to 2024. Over 300 million Americans now have health insurance coverage. The U.S. uninsured rate has fallen significantly over the past four years.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) changes the way Medicare pays for prescription drugs. These changes will impact various stakeholders, including Medicare, Medicare enrollees, drug manufacturers, and others.

The generic injectable drug market has recently experienced numerous shortages, which impose substantial public health costs. One potential cause of these shortages is low profitability of generic injectables. This brief examines the profitability of recently launched generic injectables.

This ASPE issue brief lays out a proposed comprehensive analytic framework to fully evaluate the impact of the CMS Innovation Center’s efforts on the Medicare program and the broader health care system as a whole to test innovative payment and service delivery models that reduce program expenditures while preserving or enhancing the quality of care.

This study examined the extent therapist practices and nursing homes adopted telehealth services for physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), and speech-language pathology (SLP); explored the major challenges and facilitators in adopting telerehabilitation services, and whether these services were effective in addressing patient care and staffing needs during the public health emergenc

This issue brief shows coverage gains among young adults under the Affordable Care Act, the American Rescue Plan, and the Inflation Reduction Act. The uninsured rate among this group declined by more than half, from 31.5 percent in 2009 to 13.1 percent in 2023, as employer-sponsored dependent coverage increased by over 20 percent.

This Issue Brief examines the impact of Medicaid throughout its six decades and highlights the importance of Medicaid coverage for low-income children and adults. The brief reviews studies showing that access to Medicaid coverage is associated with a significant improvement in health and mortality.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) makes improvements to Medicare to increase accessibility and affordability of prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, reduce the rate of growth in Medicare drug spending, and improve the financial sustainability of the Medicare program.

Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs) experienced larger relative gains in health insurance coverage than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010.

The uninsured rate for nonelderly Latinos decreased from 32.7 percent to 18.0 percent, from 2010 to 2022, however, Latinos are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as non-Latino Whites.