Health Care on a Budget: An Analysis of Spending by Medicare Households
This report examines Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket health care costs, which comprise a significant share of their household expenses.
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Choosing a Medicare Part D Plan: Are Medicare Beneficiaries Choosing Low-Cost Plans?
ReportSince 2006, Medicare beneficiaries have had the opportunity to choose from among dozens of plans to get the Part D prescription drug benefit, facing wide variation in benefits, premiums and cost-sharing.
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Retiree Health VEBAs: A New Twist On An Old Paradigm
Issue BriefThis issue brief provides an overview of stand-alone Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Association trusts, through which employers have been able to rid themselves of future obligations to pay retiree health benefits in exchange for making a significant payment to designed to approximate the projected cost of these benefits.
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Revisiting ‘Skin in the Game’ Among Medicare Beneficiaries: An Updated Analysis of the Increasing Financial Burden of Health Care Spending From 1997 to 2005
Issue BriefThis issue brief presents an analysis of the financial burden of out-of-pocket health care spending for Medicare beneficiaries between 1997 and 2005. The analysis shows median out-of-pocket spending as a share of Medicare beneficiaries' income increased between 1997 and 2005, from 11.9 percent to 16.1 percent. For some beneficiaries, the spending burden was even greater, with 25 percent of people on Medicare spending nearly one-third or more of their income on health care.
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Primers on Key Health Care Topics and Programs
Issue BriefThe Kaiser Family Foundation maintains a number of primers providing overviews of key health care programs and issues. Written by Foundation staff, each primer provides key data and information that helps illustrate the topic and its relevance for the nation's health care system.
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Medicare Part D 2009 Data Spotlight: Premiums
ReportThis Medicare Part D data spotlight analyzes the premiums charged by the 1,689 stand-alone Medicare Part D plans that will be offered in markets across the country in 2009. The analysis finds premiums charged for Part D plans range widely, from $10.30 per month to $136.80 per month.
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Medicare Part D 2009 Data Spotlight: The Coverage Gap
ReportThis Medicare Part D data spotlight examines the coverage gap, or "doughnut hole," in Medicare drug plans available in 2009. 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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Medicare 2008 Benefits Table
Report2008 Medicare Benefits Table Summary of Traditional Medicare, 2008 PART A Financing: 1.
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The Burden of Out-of-Pocket Health Spending Among Older Versus Younger Adults: Analysis from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1998-2003
Issue BriefUPDATED: An updated version of this analysis is now available online. Recent policy debate has focused on the issue of rising health care costs and whether it might be possible to control costs by requiring consumers to pay a larger share of their health care costs out of pocket.
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Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Progress Report: Findings From A 2006 National Survey of Seniors
Event Date:EventThe share of seniors without drug coverage dropped significantly under Medicare’s new drug benefit, according to this August 2007 Health Affairs Web Exclusive article based on a Kaiser Family Foundation, Commonwealth Fund and Tufts-New England Medical Center survey of more than 16,000 seniors.