Low-Income Assistance Under the Medicare Drug Benefit
This fact sheet provides an overview of the Medicare drug benefit and the additional subsidies available to certain eligible low-income beneficiaries. Fact Sheet - December 2009 (.
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Medicare Part D 2010 Data Spotlight: Benefit Design and Cost Sharing
ReportThe Medicare Modernization Act established a defined standard drug benefit for Part D stand-alone Prescription Drug Plans (PDPs) and Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug (MA-PD) plans, while giving plans flexibility to offer alternative benefit designs. Only about one in 10 PDPs offer the standard benefit in 2010.
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Medicare Part D 2010 Data Spotlight: A Comparison of PDPs Offering Basic and Enhanced Benefits
ReportThis Part D Data Spotlight examines key differences between basic and enhanced Medicare stand-alone prescription drug plans (PDPs), including monthly premiums, cost sharing, and gap coverage. It also examines plan names to assess whether they convey meaningful differences between basic and enhanced PDPs.
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Medicare Part D 2010 Data Spotlight: Premiums
ReportMedicare Part D helps cover the cost of outpatient prescription drugs for 27 million beneficiaries enrolled in private stand-alone prescription drug plans (PDPs) and Medicare Advantage prescription drug (MA-PD) plans. The majority of Part D enrollees pay a monthly premium for Medicare drug coverage.
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Snapshots: Wages & Benefits: A Long-Term View
Issue BriefRecent polls show that a substantial portion of families worry about whether their incomes will keep pace with rising prices generally and whether they will have to pay more for health care or health insurance.
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Medicare Part D Spotlight: Part D Plan Availability in 2010 and Key Changes Since 2006
Issue BriefThis Medicare Part D data spotlight examines the stand-alone Medicare drug plan options that will be available to beneficiaries in 2010, including the number of available plans, premiums for those plans, and benefit designs. About two-thirds of the nearly 27 million Medicare beneficiaries who are enrolled in Part D plans get their coverage through stand-alone plans.
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Medicare Advantage 2010 Data Spotlight: Plan Availability and Premiums
Issue BriefThis data spotlight examines changes in the availability and premiums of private Medicare Advantage options for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010 as the annual open enrollment period begins. While the number of plans available in 2010 declined somewhat from 2009, the analysis finds that Medicare beneficiaries on average have 33 Medicare Advantage plans to choose from.
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Medicare Part D 2010 Data Spotlight: The Coverage Gap
ReportThis data spotlight examines the coverage gap, or "doughnut hole," in Medicare stand-alone drug plans available in 2010. While in the gap in coverage, Part D enrollees (other than those receiving low-income subsidies) are required to pay 100 percent of total drug costs until they reach the catastrophic coverage level.
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Explaining Health Care Reform: What is Comparative Effectiveness Research?
Issue BriefThe brief examines current funding for comparative effectiveness research, the provisions included in the current health reform legislation, and issues related to which treatments that might be studied, whether and how to weigh costs of care, and how such findings will be used and shared with health-care practitioners and the public.
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The Crunch Continues: Medicaid Spending, Coverage and Policy in the Midst of a Recession
Event Date:EventThis annual 50-state survey finds that number of people on Medicaid and state spending on the program are climbing sharply as a result of the recession, straining state budgets and pressuring officials to curb costs despite increased financial help from the federal government through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).