Policy & Regulation

Prescription drug price increases create affordability challenges for patients and for the government. This report tracks drug price changes from 2016-2022. There were 1,216 products whose price increases during the twelve-month period from July 2021 to July 2022 exceeded the inflation rate of 8.5 percent for that time period. The average price increase for these drugs was 31.6 percent.

This Brief presents information about the risk of needing care and associated costs to provide content for policymakers and others considering long-term care financing proposals. It revises a brief that was written in October 2020.

Nutrition assistance programs have been shown to increase children’s health and well-being and decrease the risk of child maltreatment. At the same time, food insecurity rose in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Improving health equity in the United States is a priority for the Biden-Harris Administration in order to address longstanding disparities in health outcomes. Health inequities can be conceptualized and measured as drivers of differences in health outcomes.

This brief introduces the HHS Roadmap for Behavioral Health Integration, which advances the President’s Strategy to Address our National Mental Health Crisis. It provides a general overview of the approach HHS is taking to drive toward integrated care within the three pillars of the President’s Strategy and highlights selected programs and policy actions that will get us there.

Payers across the health care spectrum have begun transitioning from paying for quantity toward paying for quality. These value-based payment (VBP) programs vary in scope and focus, but generally share the goals of improving cost-savings and linking payments to value rather than volume.

COVID-19 vaccines and treatments have been an important tool in the prevention of COVID-19, including preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

This report provides current HHS projections of the number of individuals predicted to lose Medicaid coverage at the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) due to a change in eligibility or due to administrative churning.

This contractor report describes the landscape of market consolidation across the U.S. health care system and analyzes the evidence on the price, cost, and quality effects of consolidation.

This Data Point examines new Health Interview Survey data to assess recent changes in coverage, finding that the uninsured rate declined throughout 2021 and early 2022 – reaching a historic low of 8.0% by the first quarter of 2022. This reflects 5.2 million people gaining coverage since 2020.