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 ...

Amid our efforts to improve health care quality, we can easily lose sight of the most basic questions. Consider evidence-based clinical guidelines, protocols, and pathways. What are they? How do they ...

Three years into Massachusetts' grand experiment in overhauling its health system, it's hard to argue that the law has failed to meet its objectives. Today, according to estimates, more than 97 ...

Many of the problems with the U.S. health system—fragmented care, variable quality, and high and rapidly growing costs—are rooted in fee-for-service payments, in which health care providers are paid ...

Why a State Medicare Scorecard? Medicare, established 60 years ago, provides health care coverage for more than 68 million Americans, including nearly all adults age 65 and older as well as 7 million ...

The article is part of a partnership between the Commonwealth Fund and the Bassett Research Institute in Cooperstown, N.Y., to explore innovative approaches to the health care challenges facing rural ...

Summary: When patients are given decision aids, such as educational booklets, DVDs, or interactive tools, to help them make treatment choices, they are more knowledgeable and satisfied with their care ...

Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance. This Commonwealth Fund report finds the U.S. health care ...

The major drivers of cost growth are the MBS and PBS. The federal government regularly considers opportunities to reduce spending growth in the MBS through its annual budget process. To influence PBS ...

Roughly 55 percent of Medicaid enrollees are working full or part time, and a number aren’t eligible for health insurance through their jobs. Read more in an explainer here. At the end of 2025, ...

The U.S. Congress is considering deep cuts to federal Medicaid spending, as much as $880 billion over 10 years. According to the Congressional Budget Office, such cuts would represent a 12 percent ...

Research indicates that an estimated 20 percent of health outcomes are linked to medical care; the remaining 80 percent stem from socioeconomic, environmental, and behavioral factors referred to as ...