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Repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act is a top priority of the Trump Administration and the Republican leadership, which could have implications for the Medicare program. This brief provides a side-by-side comparison of the Medicare-related provisions in six bills and proposals that would repeal the ACA, excluding proposals that would not directly affect Medicare.
Medicare is likely to be back on the federal policy agenda this year as Congress and President Trump pursue repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, and potentially consider options to reduce federal spending. When talking about Medicare, the nation’s federal health insurance program for 57 million people age 65 and over and younger people with disabilities, some policymakers often express concern that the program will soon be “bankrupt” and that rising spending is unsustainable.…
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).
This issue brief provides an overview of the 2017 Medicare Part D stand-alone prescription drug plan marketplace, based on analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The brief focuses on data for 2017 and changes over time in plan availability, premiums, benefit design, cost sharing, and low-income subsidy plan availability.
Current enrollees in stand-alone Medicare Part D plans are projected to face an average 9 percent increase in premiums if they remain in their current plan for 2017, according to an analysis released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation. During Medicare’s 2017 open enrollment period, which runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7, Medicare beneficiaries in each state will have a choice of 22 stand-alone Part D drug plans (PDPs), on average. This is fewer…
This blog post revisits an earlier analysis of the drug Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) using new data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and considers both the ongoing impact of hepatitis C drugs for Medicare Part D and the broader implications for Medicare of new high-priced drugs entering the market.
Two new KFF analyses examine the potential impact of Medicare coverage of new prescription drugs for obesity and Alzheimer’s disease on program spending and beneficiary out-of-pocket costs, as well as the role that the Inflation Reduction Act could play in mitigating these effects. Manufacturers of both types of drugs are lobbying for broad Medicare coverage of them, though they face different challenges. The availability of effective weight-loss drugs, including Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide)…
The Inflation Reduction Act requires the federal government to negotiate the price of certain high-spending drugs covered by Medicare. This analysis provides context for understanding the potential impact of negotiating prices for a limited number of Medicare-covered drugs by identifying the 10 top-selling Part D drugs in 2021, measuring the share of total Part D drug spending accounted for by top-selling drugs that year, and examining changes in spending and use of these drugs since…
The Medicare Part D program provides an outpatient prescription drug benefit to older adults and people with long-term disabilities in Medicare who enroll in private plans. This brief analyzes Medicare Part D enrollment and costs in 2023 and trends over time. The analysis highlights the substantial growth of Medicare Advantage drug plans in the marketplace for Part D drug coverage, where enrollment overall is concentrated in a handful of large plan sponsors.
To capture the state of television marketing activities and consider the implications for people with Medicare, KFF analyzed ad data compiled by the Wesleyan Media Project, that were obtained from Vivvix (formerly Kantar) CMAG, a data analytics and consulting firm, and were coded by the Wesleyan Media Project in collaboration with KFF. The data set included all English-language TV ads that aired across national and local markets on broadcast television or national cable, from October…
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