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KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
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On Thursday, August 11, a panel of KFF experts held a web briefing to explain the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act and how they would affect people and federal health spending.
Addressing the cost of insulin continues to be at the forefront of policy discussions around prescription drugs. This analysis describes out-of-pocket spending on insulin products by Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in Part D drug plans, along with state-level use and spending data.
The brief provides a quick explainer of the prescription drug provisions in legislative text released by the Senate Finance Committee to be included in a forthcoming reconciliation bill and presents new estimates on how many Medicare beneficiaries could be helped by those provisions.
Total spending among traditional Medicare beneficiaries fell in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, corresponding to lower service use across most types of Medicare-covered health care services compared to 2019. The lower spending in traditional Medicare contributed to the relatively slower growth in Medicare spending overall in 2020.
Medicare spending for skilled nursing facilities increased in 2020 despite an overall decrease in the number of Medicare beneficiaries using SNF services. The higher spending is explained by longer and more expensive SNF stays in 2020 compared to 2019, both of which increased more sharply for Medicare beneficiaries under the age of 65 than for older Medicare SNF users.
We review several policy options to constrain health care spending, primarily by putting downward pressure on provider prices, including price regulation, global budgets, and spending growth targets.
This data note provides an overview of programs that help beneficiaries with modest incomes with their Medicare costs, including the Medicare Savings Programs and the Part D Low-Income Subsidy, and highlights findings from corresponding state-level profiles of eligibility and enrollment.
These state profiles capture the variations across states in the number and characteristics of Medicare beneficiaries through the Medicare Savings Programs and Medicare’s Part D Low-Income Subsidy.
In the face of rising prescription drug costs, a large majority of the public supports federal efforts to lower drug spending. Policymakers are considering several proposals that would lower prescription drug costs. To better understand the potential out-of-pocket cost exposure that Medicare beneficiaries may face for Part B drugs, which are typically administered by physicians and other health care providers, we analyzed cost-sharing liability for these drugs in traditional Medicare and cost-sharing requirements in Medicare…
This analysis looks at in-network payment rates for inpatient hospital stays, other than maternity/newborn admissions, among large employer plans relative to Medicare payment rates. We find that a cap of 150% of Medicare rates would affect 52% of in-network admissions and 36% of in-network spending, while a cap of 300% of Medicare rates would affect 13% of in-network admissions and 13% of in-network spending, with variation across types of admissions.
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