Outlet profile

KFF Health News

U.S. center-left

Owned byEditorially independent program of KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation), a nonprofit private operating foundation based in San Francisco

FundingPrimarily funded by returns on KFF's endowment; supplemented by grants from foundations including Arnold Ventures, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust; accepts no advertising

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

KFF Health News launched in June 2009 as Kaiser Health News (KHN), created inside the Kaiser Family Foundation to fill a gap left by declining health journalism capacity in traditional newsrooms. It was built around a small core of health policy journalists and quickly grew into the largest dedicated health policy newsroom in the United States. KFF itself traces back to industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, but by 1985 the foundation had severed all financial ties to Kaiser Industries and Kaiser Permanente; the modern organization was relaunched by Dr. Drew Altman in 1991. The news operation was renamed KFF Health News to make its institutional relationship clearer. It is editorially independent from KFF's policy and polling arms, though KFF serves as its publisher and primary financial backer. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it Left-Center, citing moderately loaded framing on issues like health equity and universal coverage, while also giving it high marks for factual accuracy; AllSides found no clear partisan lean in a 2022 review. The outlet has faced occasional criticism from hospital industry groups over specific articles, but has no major editorial scandals on record.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-18; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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