Medicare

The brief’s key findings are: The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) included roughly 165 provisions to improve Medicare’s finances. The Medicare Trustees Report, which reflects the ACA provisions, shows dramatically lower cost projections for Medicare in the future. The Medicare actuaries also produce alternative projections assuming that the legislated restraints on growth in payments to health providers are […]

President Bush’s failed effort to privatize part of the Social Security program received a lot of attention from the media during the first half of 2005. Congressional efforts to begin privatizing the Medicare program over the last ten years have received far less attention. This absence of media attention may be one of the reasons […]

Following the passage of the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003, the future of Medicare is less clear than at any time since its inception almost 40 years ago. Medicare policy regarding financing coverage and delivery mechanisms has been the object of intermittently fierce political debate and maneuvering since 1995 when a conservative Republican majority […]

The June 22 release of the annual Medicare Trustees Report has, as usual, elicited conflicting responses. Some have focused on the positive—Medicare spending per enrollee has continued to grow at a historically slow rate—while others have emphasized the negative — the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is now projected to run out of resources in […]

Nine million community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries—about one-fifth of all beneficiaries—have serious physical or cognitive limitations and require long-term services and supports (LTSS) that are not covered by Medicare. Nearly all have chronic conditions that require ongoing medical attention, including three-fourths who have three or more chronic conditions and are high-need, high-risk users of Medicare covered services. […]