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The $21.60 increase in 2022 is the largest in dollar terms since the start of the program, even though premiums have risen faster in percentage terms on three other occasions in the last 20 years
This brief presents data from the 2022 KFF Women’s Health Survey about reproductive age (18-49) females’ preferences for an over-the-counter contraceptive pill (N = 4,088).
During the Medicare open enrollment period for 2020, Medicare beneficiaries had an average of 24 Medicare Advantage prescription drug plans and 28 stand-alone Part D prescription drug plans to choose from for their coverage. Despite having so many Medicare options, relatively few Medicare private plan enrollees opted to switch their coverage.
The brief provides a quick explainer of the prescription drug provisions in legislative text released by the Senate Finance Committee to be included in a forthcoming reconciliation bill and presents new estimates on how many Medicare beneficiaries could be helped by those provisions.
Few Voters Know About the Medicare Drug Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, Though Seniors are More Aware and Would Be Likely to Vote for Candidates Who Support Them About a month ahead of the 2022 midterm election, abortion continues to grow as a motivating issue for voters, especially among Democrats and those living in states where abortion is now illegal, the latest KFF Health Tracking Poll finds. Half (50%) of voters now say the…
Although attention in current federal actions is largely focused on Medicare and private insurance drug prices, federal legislation also has been recently introduced or enacted that would affect Medicaid prescription drug policy.
This brief analyzes leading federal approaches to address Medicaid prescription drug spending, discusses (where available) a range of cost estimates for each policy, and assesses what drives those estimates or where there is uncertainty in them.
Medicare Part D, the outpatient prescription drug benefit for Medicare beneficiaries, provides catastrophic coverage for high out-of-pocket drug costs, but there is no limit on the total amount that beneficiaries have to pay out of pocket each year. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle support proposals to modify the design of the Part D benefit and establish a hard cap on out-of-pocket prescription drug spending by Part D enrollees. This analysis shows the number…
In response to prescription drug spending growth and heightened attention to drug prices, some policymakers have proposed allowing the federal government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs for Medicare and private payers. This brief describes the current status of drug price negotiation proposals, looks back at the history of proposals to give the federal government the authority to negotiate drug prices in Medicare, describes the negotiation provisions in key legislation (H.R. 3), and discusses…
Nearly 3 million Medicare Part D enrollees had out-of-pocket drug spending above the catastrophic threshold in a recent five-year period, finds a new KFF analysis that takes a comprehensive look at how many people on Medicare have drug expenses high enough to push them above that limit. While the Part D drug benefit has helped make drugs more affordable for people with Medicare, the lack of a hard cap on annual out-of-pocket spending under Part…
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