Low-income Medicare beneficiaries deserve special attention as Congress considers legislation to make prescription drugs more affordable. Important steps include eliminating cost-sharing for generic drugs for low-income beneficiaries and increasing participation in the Part D low-income drug subsidy.
Medicare beneficiaries with incomes below 150 percent of the federal poverty level are...
Medicare beneficiaries, providers, and plans could face severe harm if the federal courts allow a district court decision striking down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to stand. As we...
The Trump Administration’s proposed rule that would effectively ban drug rebates in Medicare and Medicaid would raise — not reduce — spending on prescription drugs, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says in a new estimate. Drug...
President Trump’s 2020 budget proposes nearly $600 billion in net Medicare spending reductions over ten years (see table). Most of the proposals...
Congress is facing renewed calls to repeal or further delay the “Cadillac tax” — the excise tax on high-cost health plans. That would be unwise for two reasons: it would lose needed revenue and would set back efforts to slow the growth of health care costs.
The Affordable...
New projections from the Medicare actuaries provide fresh evidence that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped slow spending growth throughout the nation’s health care sector.
Under the actuaries’ updated projections of...
December 19, 2018: We have corrected the list of preventive services for which the ACA eliminated cost-sharing.
If allowed to stand, a U.S. District Court judge’s decision striking down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would significantly affect Medicare. To be sure, since the legal reasoning behind the decision is...
The House may vote on a year-end tax bill that, among other provisions, would delay or repeal four health-related taxes: the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, the fee on health insurance providers (the “health insurance tax”), the excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans (...
Private Medicare Advantage (MA) insurers have long received overpayments from Medicare due to their “upcoding,” which makes MA enrollees appear less healthy than they are — and a recent court decision could worsen the problem. As policymakers look to strengthen Medicare, eliminating upcoding should be high on their...
Proposals to expand Medicare have moved to the forefront of debate, with several expansion plans advanced in policy journals or introduced in Congress. Although they vary in scope, all raise numerous technical and program design issues. In a new issue brief for the National Academy of...
