Medicare

Since 2006, national health expenditure (NHE) growth has been slow relative to historic growth rates. Annual spending growth between 2006 and 2017 averaged 5.2 percent for Medicare, 6 percent for Medicaid, and 4.4 percent for private health insurance. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) project much faster growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending […]

Some of the senior citizens who called Arizona insurance agent Denise Early wondered why their Medicare Advantage health plans were eager to send a doctor to visit them at home. A few worried that the offer might be a scam. After all, they asked, how many doctors make house calls these days? More than people […]

Four years ago, Medicare auditors came to an alarming conclusion: the federal government shouldn’t have paid a half-dozen insurance plans hundreds of millions of dollars to treat seniors in especially poor health. The findings signaled that billing errors could be deeply rooted within private Medicare Advantage plans — which contract with the federal government to […]

In Rochester, New York, a Medicare plan was paid $41 million to treat people with serious diseases — even though the plan couldn’t prove the patients in fact had those diseases. These health plans and hundreds of others are part of Medicare Advantage, a program created by Congress in 2003 to help stabilize health care […]