Half of Medicare beneficiaries, about 30 million people, are enrolled in Medicare managed care plans such as Medicare Advantage (MA). And increasingly those plans are offering modest, but important, non-medical services to older adults living at home. These supplemental services are the only long-term care-type benefits most seniors will receive through Medicare. The assistance may include anything from meal and [...]
It Is Medicare open-enrollment season. And retirees are confronting the usual confusion about what to do. Perhaps the biggest question: Should I enroll in a Medicare Advantage managed care plan or in traditional, fee-for-service Medicare? Like almost everything in the world of insurance, the answer is: It depends. In 2022, almost half of all Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in MA [...]
A great misconception of aging in America is the belief that Medicare will pay for your health care needs in old age. It won’t. It will pay for some of those medical costs. But a typical senior can expect to foot the bill for a substantial portion of their health care, even if they are enrolled in Medicare. Half of [...]
Medicare Advantage (MA) managed care plans have the potential to vastly improve care for older adults in the US. A fully-integrated health model that combines primary and specialty care, physical therapy, hospital care and even some limited personal supports could improve the quality of life for patients and save the government a substantial amount of money. But increasingly, analysts say [...]
The Medicare trustees’ new estimate that the program’s Part A Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust fund will remain solvent for an extra two years—to 2028—sounds like good news. But dig deeper into the 257-page report and the news is grim for the future of Medicare and its 64 million beneficiaries. Headlines from the trustees’ annual report always focus on the depletion [...]
Medicare Advantage managed care plans, which in 2021 covered 26 million enrollees, will get an average 8.5 percent increase in total Medicare payments next year. At the same time, MA plans are rapidly embracing a wide range of social services and supports for older adults living at home. Sometimes called long-term care lite, these benefits range from meal and food [...]
Congressional Democrats are expected to include a broad expansion of traditional Medicare benefits-- including dental, vision, and hearing—in a $3.5 trillion social spending bill they’ll consider later this year. The move would be the biggest expansion of Medicare since Congress added a drug benefit in 2003 and would go a long way toward improving the health and well-being of millions [...]
FDA’s decision last week to approve a new “Alzheimer’s disease treatment,” and the buzz that surrounds it, is a symptom of all that is wrong with the way we care for frail older adults in the US. Rather than providing the supports that people with chronic conditions desperately need, and that evidence shows works, we prefer to chase butterflies. In [...]
A new public opinion survey shows broad bipartisan backing for more public support for long-term care, especially at home, even as congressional Republicans appear to be lining up against the idea. According a new survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 63 percent of respondents say government should support programs to help low income people receive supports [...]
The Washington Post reports that business lobbyists are quietly trying to kill President Biden’s efforts to increase federal spending on Medicaid home and community-based (HCBS) long-term care services. The reason: The White House wants to fund the $400 billion increase—part of the president’s $2.2 trillion infrastructure spending program-- by raising corporate taxes. And make no mistake, business opposition could sink [...]