May 7, 2013 - Under the Affordable Care Act, overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans are gradually being pared back. But will private plans be able to cope with the reduced payments? Using newly available government data, this brief examines average costs among Medicare Advantage plans and variation in costs among plan types.
May 6, 2013 - Combining Medicare's hospital, physician, and prescription drug coverage with commonly purchased private supplemental coverage into one health plan could produce national savings of $180 billion over a decade while improving care for beneficiaries, a new Health Affairs study finds.
March 18, 2013 - In this Commonwealth Fund–supported article, the authors suggest that "bundled payment" covering all services provided to a patient for treatment of a specific illness or injury would need to be risk-adjusted, so that providers do not have incentives to avoid patients, like those with chronic illness, who can be expected to have higher costs.