Medicare

Opioid use was very common among the long-term care (LTC) residents in our sample. Perhaps reflecting their post-acute rehabilitative needs, discharged residents were more likely to have opioid use prior to LTC admission and at the beginning of the LTC stay.

The Improving Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act of 2014 requires a report to Congress on unified payment for Medicare post-acute care (PAC). Medicare PAC providers are skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, long-term care hospitals, and home health agencies. Each PAC provider setting has a separate Medicare fee-for-service prospective payment system.

Using Medicare FFS claims data and county-level vaccination rates, we estimate savings of about $2.6 billion from reduced Medicare hospitalizations associated with COVID-19 vaccinations in early 2021.

Medicare served nearly 63 million beneficiaries in 2019. 62 percent were enrolled in Part A or Part B, and the rest (37 percent) were in Medicare Advantage (Part C). 74 percent were enrolled in Part D drug coverage, 13 percent had private drug coverage, and nearly 9 percent had no drug coverage. Demographic characteristics and health status varied across these groups.

More than 5 million Medicare beneficiaries struggle to afford prescription medications. Among adults 65 and older, Black and Latino beneficiaries are most likely to experience affordability problems. Medicare beneficiaries with lower incomes and those under age 65 also had above-average rates of not taking needed medications due to cost.

This Issue Brief summarizes the ACA's preventive services provisions for private health coverage, Medicare, and Medicaid; provides updated estimates of the number of people benefiting from these provisions nationally; and examines evidence on trends in utilization of preventive services and outcomes since the ACA's preventive services coverage requirements went into effect.

This research report examines changes in Medicare fee-for-service Part B visits and use of telehealth in 2020 during the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) by beneficiary characteristics, provider specialty, and location. The analysis found that Medicare in-person visits dropped while telehealth visits increased significantly at the start of the pandemic.

Dual eligible beneficiaries are an important subset of the Medicare and Medicaid populations because they have a high prevalence of chronic conditions and disabilities, substantial care needs, and high health care and long-term services and supports (LTSS) utilization and costs.

The purpose of this study is to identify associations between COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths among Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries and the proportion of the population fully vaccinated at the county-level between January and May 2021.

In an effort to help build the evidence base around the social determinants of health (SDOH), the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) engaged RAND in a project to evaluate the current evidence from programs and policies targeting SDOH and identify the SDOH research questions, data sources, and data gaps that might be used to develop an SDOH research agenda.