Tag: Avalere Health

Lifting Therapy Caps Is A Load Off Medicare Patients’ Shoulders

Last month’s budget deal means Medicare beneficiaries are eligible for physical and occupational therapy indefinitely. Plus, prescription drug costs will fall for more seniors.

By Susan Jaffe  | Kaiser Health News | March 14, 2018 | This KHN story also ran on 

Physical therapy helps Leon Beers, 73, get out of bed in the morning and

Leon Beers gets help from caregiver Timothy Wehe. (Bert Johnson for KHN)

maneuver around his home using his walker. Other treatment strengthens his throat muscles so that he can communicate and swallow food, said his sister Karen Morse. But in mid-January, his home health care agency told Morse it could no longer provide these services because he had used all his therapy benefits allowed under Medicare for the year.

… Under a recent change in federal law, people who qualify for Medicare’s [physical, occupational and speech] therapy services will no longer lose them solely because they used too much. 

“It is a great idea,” said Beers. “It will help me get back to walking.” [Continued at Kaiser Health News,  NPR  and The Washington Post]

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Don’t Just Renew Your Medicare Plan. Shopping Around Can Save Money.

By Susan Jaffe | October 15, 2015 | Kaiser Health News in collaboration with Money magazine

Ten years after a prescription drug benefit was added to Medicare, 39 million older or disabled AmerMoney 4icans have coverage to help pay for their medicine, including most of the 17 million with private insurance policies known as Medicare Advantage, an alternative to traditional Medicare.
The annual enrollmentmedicare-shop-KHN 101515 period for these private drug and Advantage plans for 2016 starts Thursday and runs through Dec. 7.
It pays to shop around. The monthly cost is increasing an average 26 percent for UnitedHealthcare’s AARP MedicareRx Saver Plus while the First Health Value Plus plan
is dropping an average 13 percent, according to an analysis of the 10 most popular drug plans by Avalere Health, a research firm.
Some actual costs may be even more dramatic. In Albany, N.Y., the price of a Cigna-HealthSpring drug plan is going up 36 percent, according to the StateWide Senior Action Council, a New York consumer group. [More in Kaiser Health News or Money magazine]
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By Susan Jaffe   |  June 28, 2013 |  KAISER HEALTH NEWS 

The Commission on Long-Term Care held its first meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill with some members acknowledging that their late start adds to their challenges in offering Congress recommendations on how to finance the expensive services for seniors and disabled Americans.

The panel isKHN logo hobbled with a meager budget and staffing, and it is facing a three-month deadline for its report. Speakers at the meeting reminded the commission that the effort is daunting.

The commission heard a litany of statistics from four experts who explained how the nation’s growing population of seniors will become more dependent on long-term care services. But the rising cost of those services threatens to deplete individuals’ savings and add to the nation’s budget problems because of the expenses borne by Medicare and Medicaid. MORE

 

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lancet cover 2    Volume 380, Issue 9855, Pages 1727 – 1728, 17 November 2012

WORLD REPORT    Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is unlikely to run smoothly despite the Nov 6 election result. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.

Just 3 days after President Barack Obama’s re-election preserved his signature legislative achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), his administration reset a deadline for states to take a crucial step toward implementing it. The delay in the wake of the health law’s dramatic affirmation—first by the US Supreme Court and then at the polls—is another reminder that the way forward may still encounter obstacles, even if the most serious threat was eliminated on Nov 6. [MORE]   [PDF]