ASPE Issue Brief

This brief describes how enhancing linked data infrastructure across health and human services programs can improve efficiency, increase transparency through strengthening outcomes research, and empower patients and families to make more informed choices.

The cost of raising a family in America is high and continues to rise, with inflation rising by 23 percent between 2020 and 2025. For working families, some of the largest nondiscretionary expenses continue to be health care and child care.

We conducted a landscape analysis to understand the characteristics, impacts, and costs associated with medical device shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. Among health systems, nursing homes and rural hospitals were the most impacted by medical device shortages due to high demand and supply transportation issues.

Shifting spending and delivery of long-term services and supports (LTSS) from institutions to the home and community is often referred to as rebalancing. This report and brief describe variation in LTSS rebalancing between 2016 and 2019 by enrollee age, health condition, and demographic factors.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released a report examining trends in prevalence of Long COVID among different types of workers and among individuals who were not working. Workers in different occupations face different risks of COVID infection, and, potentially, Long COVID, depending on the nature of their work.

This report examines national trends in telehealth service delivery to enrollees ages 0-18 years from 2019 to 2021, by enrollee characteristics such as age group and race and ethnicity. Services delivered via telehealth to pediatric Medicaid and CHIP enrollees rapidly expanded with the onset of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) in 2020 and remained higher than pre-PHE levels in 2021.

This Issue Brief provides a descriptive analysis of postpartum health care use among the Medicaid population before and during the PHE, when the continuous enrollment condition was in effect.

While the likelihood of needing any long-term services and supports (LTSS) is roughly a coin flip, the cost if one needs assistance for a long period of time can be catastrophic. For example, about one-in-five Americans turning age 65 today will have long-term care costs exceeding $200,000.

The U.S. has a number of policies related to drug pricing, affordability, and availability. To encourage manufacturers to innovate with new therapies, patent policy rewards the creation of new branded medicines. As those patents come to an end, generic drug manufacturers may enter a market and seek to sell their products at lower prices than the competing brand drugs.

To understand the size and impact of costs to clinical trial participants, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) conducted an exploratory survey of 112 U.S. adults who participated in an oncology clinical trial between 2018-2024.