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  • The Independent Payment Advisory Board: A New Approach to Controlling Medicare Spending

    Issue Brief

    In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act authorized the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to help control the growth in Medicare costs. Beginning in 2014, IPAB will issue recommendations to lower Medicare costs in the event that spending exceeds targets established in the health care reform law. This brief explains how the Independent Payment Advisory Board will be structured, the process and timelines for IPAB to make recommendations to achieve…

  • Implications Of A Federal Block Grant Program For Medicaid

    Issue Brief

    This issue brief examines the broad implications of converting Medicaid to block grant financing, one of several ideas that have been put forth to help reduce the federal deficit. The paper, which does not analyze any specific proposal, notes that switching to block grant financing would fundamentally alter the Medicaid program and could have significant implications for states, localities, beneficiaries and health care providers. Issue Brief (.pdf) Related Resources: Prior Analyses of Block Grant Proposals…

  • Medicare Spending Limits: Issues and Implications

    Issue Brief

    Several major deficit-reduction plans include provisions that would impose an explicit limit on the growth in Medicare spending. In general, such limits would trigger cuts if Medicare spending grows more rapidly than a target, such as the growth in the economy. This brief prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation describes and analyzes various approaches to setting and enforcing limits on Medicare spending. It looks at how proposed spending limits might work if Medicare spending per…

  • Assessing the Effects of the Economy on the Recent Slowdown in Health Spending

    Issue Brief

    Introduction Health spending has been growing at historically low levels in recent years. The Office of the Actuary (OACT) in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports that national health spending grew by 3.9% each year from 2009 to 2011, the lowest rate of growth since the federal government began keeping such statistics in 1960. Estimates from the Center for Sustainable Health Spending at the Altarum Institute suggest that the slowdown largely continued into 2012, with health spending…

  • More Than Half of the Public Worries Federal Medicaid Budget Cuts Would Affect Their Family’s Ability to Obtain and Afford Care; More Worry It Will Increase the Uninsured 

    News Release

    As Congress weighs spending cuts and other changes to Medicaid, more than half (54%) of the public say they are worried significant reductions in federal Medicaid spending would negatively affect their family’s ability to obtain and afford health care, a new KFF Health Tracking Poll finds. This includes about three in 10 (29%) who say they are “very worried” about such an outcome.  Democrats (69%) and independents (68%) are much more likely to say they…

  • Modifying Medicare’s Benefit Design: What’s the Impact on Beneficiaries and Spending?

    Report

    This report examines an approach to reforming Medicare that has been a focus of Congressional hearings and featured in several broader debt reduction and entitlement reform proposals, and was included in the June 2016 House Republican health plan. The analysis models four different options for modifying Medicare's benefit design, all of which include a single deductible, modified cost-sharing requirements, a new cost-sharing limit, and a prohibition on first-dollar Medigap coverage. The analysis models the expected…

  • How Much Has Medicare Spent on the EpiPen Since 2007?

    Issue Brief

    This data note examines the effects of rising EpiPen prices on Medicare and beneficiaries. We analyze EpiPen spending, in the aggregate and per user, in Medicare Part D between 2007 (the year after the Part D drug benefit took effect, and the year Mylan acquired the product) and 2014 (the most recent year of data available).

  • The Status of Funding for Zika: The President’s Request, Congressional Proposals, & Final Funding

    Issue Brief

    This issue brief provides a landscape of the status of U.S. funding for Zika, a mosquito-transmitted infection that in pregnant women can cause microcephaly as well as other serious birth defects. The brief compares the Congressionally approved Zika funding levels, which provides $1.1 billion to the Zika response, to the President’s February 22nd request, the House and Senate bills that passed each chamber in May, and a Conference Agreement that had been approved by the…