One of the biggest misconceptions seniors have about health care is this: I have Medicare so don’t need to worry about medical costs in old age. It is a dangerous mistake. Not only does traditional Medicare generally not pay for long-term supports and services (either at home or in a nursing home), but it doesn’t pay for a significant chunk [...]
In 2020, Medicare beneficiaries will have more opportunities to join Medicare Advantage (MA) managed care plans that offer limited personal supports and services such as home care, non-medical transportation, nutrition programs, and home modifications. The benefits, first allowed by the federal government for 2019, are not full-blown long-term care, but they do provide critical services and supports that may make [...]
This week’s second round of debates among Democratic presidential hopefuls is producing a (mostly healthy) conversation about health insurance. But for normal people, much of the argument is enormously confusing. What are these candidates talking about? And how are their plans different from today’s Medicare and from one another? One way to make this debate more comprehensible is to drop [...]
Patient advocates really, really want to believe that people discharged from a hospital are better off getting additional medical care and rehab at home than in a skilled nursing facility (SNF). But an important new study of 17 million Medicare claims over seven years tells a more ambiguous story. The study found that post-acute care at home resulted in significantly [...]
If you add up the proposed Medicare changes in President Trump’s 2020 budget, it looks like he would cut the program by $845 billion over the next decade. That’s generated outrage from Democrats, but a closer look suggests that the reductions are much smaller, most would affect providers rather than beneficiaries, and many recycle old ideas that have little chance of ever [...]
A new report this week about future increases in Medicare spending set off wildly misleading headlines about the program’s future and what is might mean for efforts to expand it, as many prominent Democrats are proposing. As you wade through all this, there may be much less to the new forecast than meets the eye. Keep in mind three points: [...]
The Trump Administration has proposed a major change in the way drugs are priced for Medicare beneficiaries. The new rules would upend the current complex and opaque pricing system for pharmaceuticals, lower prices for users of some costly drugs (though not others), and raise Medicare Part D premiums for everyone. Whether you win or lose under the new system would [...]
Believe it or not, there is a chance President Trump and congressional Democrats can reach an agreement this year to limit the growth in Medicare drug prices. It certainly won’t be easy, given the toxic relationship the president and Democrats have built up in just the past few weeks. But both sides have good reasons to make a deal, and [...]
No issue generates more anger and confusion among Medicare recipients than observation status—that hospital stay that really isn’t a hospital stay. Over the holidays, I got an earful from three people who had been treated at a hospital by hospital staff yet not admitted to the hospital. A typical case goes like this: A person comes to a hospital emergency [...]
After the new Congress is sworn in next January it may address several issues that directly affect the well-being of older adults as well as younger people with disabilities. The House, which will be controlled by Democrats, and the Senate, still run by Republicans, will have very different perspectives on these issues but both chambers are likely to confront the [...]