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This brief examines the income, assets, and home equity of Medicare beneficiaries, overall and by age, race and ethnicity, and gender. Most Medicare beneficiaries live on relatively low incomes and have modest financial resources to draw upon if they need costly care or long-term services and supports.
Health care debt is a widespread problem in the United States. Medicare offers coverage for a range of health care services, including hospitalizations, physician visits, prescription drugs, and post-acute care, but Medicare beneficiaries generally pay out-of-pocket for their monthly premiums and deductibles, cost-sharing for Medicare-covered services, and the cost of services not covered by Medicare. This data note examines findings from the KFF Health Care Debt Survey to assess the prevalence, sources and consequences of health care debt among Medicare-age adults.
If you qualify for the full premium subsidy for your Medicare prescription drug plan, are enrolled in traditional Medicare, and your current prescription drug plan will not be offered next year, you will be automatically reassigned by Medicare to a new prescription drug plan for coverage in the next year.
Half of adults say they have difficulty affording monthly bills or are just able to afford household expenses without having money left over. These groups overwhelmingly rate the economy negatively and are more likely to want 2024 presidential candidates to discuss economic issues.
With open enrollment underway, Medicare beneficiaries have until December 7th to review and select their coverage for 2024. They also have a lot of options to choose from, as two new KFF analyses show.
Medicare Advantage plans denied 3.4 million prior authorization requests for health care services in whole or in part in 2022, or 7.4% of the 46.2 million requests submitted on behalf of enrollees that year, according to a new KFF analysis of federal data. That was a higher share of denials than in recent years.
It depends on the state where you live. Some states require insurance companies to sell Medigap supplement policies to people under age 65, but not all states do.
On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a longstanding legal precedent that required federal courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretation when statutes are ambiguous. The decision will shift many policy decisions from federal agencies to federal judges, with implications for health policy that will reverberate for years to come. This issue brief examines the decision and assesses what’s ahead.
The future of the Affordable Care Act, once a key issue for Republican voters, is now of higher importance to Democratic voters. This KFF Health Tracking Poll also explores other important issues for candidates to discuss according to voters, Medicaid unwinding, Medicare drug-price provisions, and abortion as a voting issue.
The U.S. Midwest and South regions have higher average obesity rates among adults. What does this mean for access and coverage of prescription drugs for weight loss?
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