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The House of Representatives recently passed a budget reconciliation bill that would appropriate funding for cost-sharing reductions that insurers are required to provide to low-income enrollees in the Affordable Care Act marketplace. This policy watch explains what these cost-sharing reductions are, how they relate to federal spending, and what effect appropriating funding might have on premiums and the uninsured rate.
With Vice President Harris promising to address medical debt as part of her economic plan, KFF Executive Vice President for Health Policy Larry Levitt explores why it is a symptom of the broader problem of affordable health care and reviews recent efforts to address it in this JAMA Health Forum post.
For 2024, the average Medicare beneficiary has access to 43 Medicare Advantage plans and can choose from plans offered by 8 firms. Among the majority of Medicare Advantage plans that cover prescription drugs, 66 percent will charge no premium in addition to the monthly Medicare Part B premium. As in previous years, the vast majority of Medicare Advantage plans will offer supplemental benefits, including fitness, dental, vision, and hearing benefits.
The Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit has helped improve the affordability of medications for people with Medicare. Yet Part D enrollees can face relatively high out-of-pocket costs because the Part D benefit does not have a hard cap on out-of-pocket spending. This analysis presents the latest data on out-of-pocket drug spending among Medicare Part D enrollees without low-income subsidies who have costs above the catastrophic coverage threshold.
Amid increasing state and national interest in using managed care delivery models for Medicaid beneficiaries, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) hosted a public briefing on Tuesday, June 25, 2013 to provide information on recent transitions from fee-for-service to managed care, and to discuss their implications for care access and…
In 2020, more than 22 million Medicare beneficiaries (34%) are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, which are mainly HMOs and PPOs offered by private insurers as an alternative to the traditional Medicare program. This data note provides an overview of the Medicare Advantage plans that will be available in 2020, including the variation in the number of plans available by county and plan type. The brief also examines the insurers entering the Medicare Advantage market for the first time and also examines the insurers exiting the market.
This brief highlights data from a survey of state Medicaid programs conducted by KCMU on coverage of preventive services recommended for non-elderly adults before the ACA was enacted.
This brief and accompanying slides examine cost sharing - deductibles, copayments and coinsurance - in 2015 insurance plans sold on the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) federally-facilitated marketplaces. The analysis looks at out-of-pocket limits, as well as cost sharing for hospital stays, physician visits, emergency room visits, and prescription drugs, for plans across the metal levels (platinum, gold, silver and bronze).
In this column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman explores the trend of higher deductibles in health plans and discusses a new analysis showing that many people with private insurance don’t have sufficient financial resources to pay a mid- or high-range deductible.
In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal's Think Tank, Drew Altman explores the trend of higher deductibles in health plans and discusses a new analysis showing that many people with insurance don’t have sufficient financial resources to pay a mid- or high-range deductible. All previous columns by Drew Altman are available online.
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