Second, undergirding these pillars is the basic principle that everyone, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much ...

The United States spends more on health care than any other country, yet Americans continue to experience worse health outcomes than their international peers. What lessons can the U.S. learn from ...

We believe everyone should be able to get the effective, affordable care they need to maintain and improve their health. Focusing on people who have low incomes and those who are medically underserved ...

The Achieving Equitable Outcomes program aims to reduce unequal treatment, experience, and outcomes in health and health care. It generates evidence, promotes innovative care models, and develops ...

The Commonwealth Fund’s Expanding Coverage and Access program seeks to ensure that everyone in the U.S. has access to affordable, comprehensive health coverage, whether through employers, Medicaid, ...

The high level of U.S. spending puts a tremendous strain on businesses, governments, and household budgets. It makes care increasingly unaffordable for people — even to the point where many forgo or ...

Registration lead Arilu Pineda, left, at her workstation at Sarasota Memorial Hospital on July 28, 2022, in Sarasota, Fla.

The Relative Value Scale Update Committee’s role in determining reimbursement rates has come under scrutiny for its ...

The United States spends far more per person on health care than the rest of the world does, and so do American families. Commonwealth Fund research aims to explain what’s driving these high costs. We ...

Ph.D., is a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia, S.C. He serves as the director of the South Carolina Center for Rural and ...

Medical debt, or personal debt incurred from unpaid medical bills, is a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. 1 Almost a third of working age U.S. adults are currently in debt because of ...

This brief was originally published in December 2020 and updated in July 2025. In 2023, at a time when maternal mortality was declining worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the ...