Federal Budget

This report examines a new measure of Medicare’s financial health established by the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA). The report, authored by Marilyn Moon, takes an in-depth look at the program’s new solvency test, which measures general revenues as a share of total Medicare spending and can trigger a “funding warning” that compels the President to propose and the Congress to consider a funding warning.

On March 4, 2014, the Office of Management and Budget released President Obama’s budget for fiscal year (FY) 2015, which includes provisions related to federal spending and revenues, including Medicare savings. The President’s budget would use federal savings and revenues to reduce the federal debt and replace sequestration of Medicare and other federal programs for 2015 through 2024. This brief summarizes the Medicare provisions included in the President’s budget proposal for FY 2015.

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.

The 2013 Survey of Americans on the U.S. Role in Global Health examines the American public’s views, knowledge and opinions of U.S. efforts to improve health for people in developing countries. The fifth in a series that began in 2009, the survey explores the public’s views on global health spending and foreign aid, their priorities for the U.S. in world affairs, and the attention they pay to the issue of health in developing countries.

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.

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…

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…

A new report, The Rising Cost of Living Longer: Analysis of Medicare Spending by Age for Beneficiaries in Traditional Medicare, from the Kaiser Family Foundation takes a detailed look at per person Medicare spending by age and by service among the nearly 30 million people covered by traditional Medicare in 2011