Congress amended the Medicare program through The Balanced Budget Act of 1997, P.L. 105-33, to achieve two major goals. First, the amendments served to balance the federal budget. " (W)ithout the $116.4 billion in net spending reductions, a balanced budget would not have been achieved. " (fn. Urban Institute) Second, these changes were made to stem the rapid growth of Medicare expenditures, par...

OBJECTIVES Prior to the implementation of Medicare Part D in the United States, inequalities were found to exist in the use of medications between minority and white beneficiaries. Despite improvements in medication affordability after Medicare Part D implementation, it is still not clear whether the characteristics of the program have improved drug utilization patterns among minorities to the ...

OBJECTIVE To examine how FFS Medicare utilization of endoscopy procedures for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening changed after implementation of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) in 2006, which provided subsidized drug coverage and expanded the geographic availability of Medicare managed care plans across the US. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING Using secondary...

BACKGROUND The elderly are under represented in clinical trials of cancer therapy and the elderly who are enrolled may be unrepresentative. OBJECTIVE To assess whether Medicare claims data might be used to understand the benefits and tolerance of chemotherapy in the general elderly population, the construct validity of Medicare 5FU claims for elderly colon cancer patients within the SEER-Medi...

BACKGROUND Reports from the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) continue to express significant concern with the overall fiscal sustainability of Medicare and the exponential increase in costs for chronic pain management. STUDY DESIGN The study is an ...

OBJECTIVE Our objectives were to 1) estimate the prevalence of diabetes and diabetic lower-extremity ulcers in the Medicare population, 2) characterize Medicare population-specific costs for lower-extremity ulcer episodes, and 3) evaluate potential cost savings associated with better healing of lower-extremity ulcers. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Prevalence and costs of diabetic lower-extremit...

PURPOSE We estimated the effect of a voucher benefit on the demand for personal assistance by Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years or older who had functional disabilities. DESIGN AND METHODS We performed a secondary data analysis on 645 Medicare beneficiaries from the Medicare Primary and Consumer-Directed Care Demonstration (a randomized controlled trial) between August 1998 and June 2000. ...

This paper examines the generational aspect of the current Medicare system and some stylized reforms. We find that the rates of return on Medicare for today’s workers are higher than those for Social Security and that the Medicare system is shifting a greater share of the burden on future workers than is Social Security. Nonetheless, the rates of return on Medicare, using the Medicare Trustees ...

BACKGROUND By a wide margin, lung cancer is the most significant cause of cancer death in the United States and worldwide. The incidence of lung cancer increases with age, and Medicare beneficiaries are often at increased risk. Because of its demonstrated effectiveness in reducing mortality, lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) imaging will be covered without cost-shar...

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE Hospital-acquired conditions, or HACs, often result in additional Medicare payments, generated during the initial hospitalization and in subsequent health care encounters. The purpose of this article is to estimate the incremental cost to Medicare, as measured by Medicare program payments, of six HACs. STUDY DESIGN The researchers used a matched case-control design to deter...