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This brief about the 2018 Medicare Part D marketplace analyzes the latest data on Medicare drug coverage and trends over time, including both stand-alone prescription drug plans and Medicare Advantage drug plans. The analysis focuses on enrollment, premiums, cost sharing, and the low-income subsidy.
This data note analyzes the number and variety of Medicare Advantage plan choices available to beneficiaries, and also describes changes in the health care insurers offering private health plans in 2018. This spotlight is part of a series of spotlights tracking key changes in the Medicare Advantage program.
Medicare Advantage plan networks included 46 percent of all physicians in a county, on average, according to a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The study, using 2015 data, is the first to examine the size and composition of physician networks among increasingly popular Medicare Advantage private plans, which now cover 19 million people, or one-third of the Medicare population. The study, which analyzed data from 391 plans offered by 55 insurers in a…
This report takes an in-depth look at Medicare Advantage plans’ physician networks. The analysis draws upon data from 391 Medicare Advantage plans serving beneficiaries in 20 diverse counties in 2015. The report examines the size and composition of plans’ physician networks, the variation across counties, the inclusion of physicians by specialty, and the relationship between network size and other plan features, such as premiums and quality star ratings.
A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 147 counties lack Medicare Advantage plans – many more than the 19 counties expected to lack an Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace insurer next year. Yet Medicare Advantage, the private plans that cover a third of all Medicare beneficiaries, is often described as an example of a robust insurance market, while some policymakers say the “bare” counties under the ACA are evidence that the law…
This issue brief notes that more counties lack Medicare Advantage plans than are at risk of not having an Affordable Care Act marketplace insurer next year. It examines the overlap between the counties without Medicare Advantage or marketplace insurers and assesses some of the potential reasons why such counties have trouble attracting insurers.
Gretchen Jacobson, Associate Director of the Foundation's Program on Medicare Policy, testified on June 7, 2017 before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Health. Her testimony focused on three approaches for integrating and coordinating care for Medicare beneficiaries, and the opportunities and challenges presented by these approaches.
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