Throughout this election season, the Kaiser Family Foundation will provide analysis of health care issues addressed by the presidential candidates.

• 2008 Presidential Candidate Health Care Proposals: Side-by-Side Summary
  This online tool allows users to customize side-by-sides by selecting as many as four candidates for comparison that can then be formatted into a printer-friendly pdf. The tool summarizes positions in four overall categories of access to health care coverage, cost containment, improving the quality of care and financing.
• Interactive Map Tracking Comprehensive State Initiatives on Covering the Uninsured
  This interactive map provides summaries of state coverage initiatives.
• Annual 50-State Survey of State Officials on Medicaid and State Budget Actions
  This survery finds that Medicaid enrollment declines for the first time in nearly a decade, but 42 states are planning to expand coverage for the uninsured.
• SCHIP Reauthorization: Key Questions in the Current Debate
  This brief answers key questions that explain the ongoing policy debate.
• Employer Health Benefits 2007 Annual Survey
  This annual survey of employers provides a detailed look at trends in employer-sponsored health coverage.
• Health Care Costs: A Primer
  This primer on health care costs examines the rapid growth in the nation's health care costs since 1970.
• Massachusetts Health Care Reform Plan
  This fact sheet summarizes the plan and its implications.
• kaiserEDU Issue Module: U.S. Health Care Costs
  This issue module provides the latest information on the factors driving health care costs and current policy proposals to limit spending.
• Fact Sheets Summarize President's Budget Proposals for Health Insurance Coverage, Including Medicaid and SCHIP
  These fact sheets provide an overview of President Bush's policy plans on these health coverage issues.

• Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Election 2008: March 2008
  Growing economic worries have led to a sharp rise in the economy as a presidential campaign issue, eclipsing health and Iraq. At the same time, health care continues to play a role both as an independent issue, and as part of the voters' growing concerns about the economy. The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Election 2008 also examines the views of political independents and of those who name health care as one of their most important voting issues.
• NPR/Kaiser/Harvard Survey: The Public on Requiring Individuals to Have Health Insurance
  This survey conducted jointly by NPR and public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health examines how the public views different approaches for expanding health coverage, including provisions that would require individuals to purchase insurance or parents to obtain coverage for their children. The survey looks at whether or not the public supports such provisions, the major reasons behind their views, and how opinions differ among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
• Analysis Finds Presidential Candidates Health Care Platforms Reflect Sharp Differences in Perspectives of Likely Primary Voters
  With the next wave of presidential primary elections quickly approaching, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health and the Kaiser Family Foundation find that the sharply contrasting health care platforms of the leading Democratic and Republican presidential candidates reflect dramatic differences in the perspectives of their primary voters. Based on a new Kaiser/Harvard poll of likely primary voters in early primary states, as well as data from 10 other recent polls, their analysis appears in the Jan. 24 New England Journal of Medicine.
• Public Views on SCHIP Reauthorization
  This October 2007 survey conducted jointly by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health examines the public's views and opinions of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the pending legislation surrounding its reauthorization.
• Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Awareness and Perceptions of the Movie "Sicko"
  This August 2007 survey finds that although only 4% of adults say they have watched Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko," almost half of the public (46%) had seen the movie or heard or read something about it a little over a month after its national release. Among those familiar with "Sicko," 45% said they have had a discussion with friends, co-workers, and family about the U.S. health system as a result of the movie; 43% said they were more likely to think there is a need to reform the health system.
• Survey Brief: Political Independents and Health Care
  This independent voter Survey Brief takes an in-depth look at their views on health care, including the saliency of the issue, which party best represents their own views, whether candidates should focus on lowering costs or expanding coverage and willingness to pay to cover the uninsured.
• Massachusetts Health Reform Tracking Survey
  The poll, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, finds support for the new health insurance law has increased.
• Kaiser Health Security Watch
  This is a set of tracking questions that together serve as a barometer for monitoring people's level of concern about their ability to access and pay for health care.

health08.org will provide links to other organizations following health care during the election season.

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