Federal Budget

Medicare, the federal health program that provides health care and coverage to 54 million seniors and younger adults with permanent disabilities, is in the midst of an unprecedented slowdown in spending growth.  A new issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation, How Much of the Medicare Spending Slowdown Can be…

This paper identifies and quantifies, to the extent possible, the factors that explain the gap between actual Medicare spending in 2014 and CBO’s 2009 projections of what Medicare spending would be this year. The study synthesizes information from a variety of sources and presents new analysis to assess the extent to which lower-than-projected Medicare spending in 2014 can be explained by deliberate policy and program changes, unexpected trends, and other factors.

In the latest post in the Policy Insights series, Jen Kates and Josh Michaud outline eight questions that are likely to shape the U.S. global health response in the last two years of the current presidential term and beyond. Follow Jen Kates and Josh Michaud on Twitter, and access previous columns…

This Policy Insight outlines eight questions that are likely to shape the U.S. global health response in the last two years of the current presidential term and beyond.

This analysis provides a detailed look at per person Medicare spending on the nearly 30 million beneficiaries over age 65 who are enrolled in the traditional Medicare program. Among the key findings of the report is that per person spending rises with age, peaking at age 96. But this rise is not entirely explained by Medicare spending on end of life care, which declines with age. What Medicare spends money on also changes as beneficiaries age. Hospital care is the largest component of Medicare spending throughout the age curve, up to age 100, but there is less spending on physician services and more on home health, skilled nursing and hospice care as beneficiaries age.

In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman dives into this week’s release of the Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report to discuss the good news that may have been missed. All previous columns by Drew Altman are available online.

In his latest column for The Wall Street Journal’s Think Tank, Drew Altman dives into this week’s release of the Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report to discuss the good news that may have been missed.

On Monday, July 14, 2014, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Alliance for Health Reform will host a briefing to discuss CHIP, and why it was created, as well as experiences with children’s coverage through CHIP and Medicaid, and some of the key policy and financing questions around children’s health coverage looking forward.

This policy insight examines the unexpected drop in Medicare’s per-beneficiary spending projections and its implications for beneficiaries and the program’s future.