This infographic from the Visualizing Health Policy series, produced in partnership with JAMA, looks at long-term care for seniors.

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 tutorial was produced for kaiserEDU.org, a Kaiser Family Foundation website that ceased production in September 2013. The kaiserEDU.org tutorials are no longer being updated but have been made available on kff.org due to demand by professors who are using the tutorials in class assignments. You may search for other…

Long-term care (LTC) in the United States has evolved over the course of the last century to better serve the needs of seniors and person with disabilities. This long-term care timeline outlines the major milestones in LTC from the nursing home era, which created an institutional bias in LTC, to the era of home and community based services (HCBS) and integration, and into the era of health reform and beyond.

More than one third of the nation’s 15,500 nursing homes, accounting for 39 percent of all nursing home residents, received relatively low ratings of 1 or 2 stars under the federal government’s recently revamped Five-star Quality Rating System, according to a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The rating…

Medicaid, the main health insurance program for low-income people and the single largest source of public coverage in the U.S., turns 50 this year. In that time, it has grown to cover nearly 70 million Americans and become a key source of financing for safety net hospitals and health centers,…

This report provides an in-depth examination of the changes taking place in Medicaid programs across the country. The findings in this report are drawn from the 16th annual budget survey of Medicaid officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia conducted by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and Health Management Associates (HMA), in collaboration with the National Association of Medicaid Directors. This report highlights policy changes implemented in state Medicaid programs in FY 2016 and those implemented or planned for FY 2017 based on information provided by the nation’s state Medicaid directors. Key areas covered include changes in eligibility and enrollment, managed care and delivery system reforms, long-term services and supports, provider payment rates and taxes, and covered benefits (including prescription drug policies).

This brief profiles five Medicaid long-term services and supports beneficiaries who transitioned back to the community as participants in the Money Follows the Person demonstration program in Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Since 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured has periodically surveyed state Money Follows the Person (MFP) programs, conducted state case studies, and profiled the experiences of individual MFP beneficiaries. Based on the information and data collected in our six surveys, we identify some lessons learned from MFP that could inform future Medicaid long-term services and supports rebalancing policies.

Enacted into law in 2006 as part of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA), the Money Follows the Person demonstration provides states with enhanced federal matching funds for twelve months for each Medicaid beneficiary transitioned from an institutional setting to a community-based setting. In July 2010, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) surveyed states about the current status of their MFP program including trends in enrollment, services and per capita spending.