OBJECTIVE To estimate the effects of changes in Medicare inpatient hospital prices on hospitals' overall revenues, operating expenses, profits, assets, and staffing. PRIMARY DATA SOURCE Medicare hospital cost reports (1996-2009). STUDY DESIGN For each hospital, we quantify the year-to-year price impacts from changes in the Medicare payment formula. We use cumulative simulated price impacts ...

Enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans in rural areas grew more than 50% in the first three quarters of 2007 and has more than tripled since the inception of the MA program at the beginning of 2006. However, rural enrollment remains well below urban enrollment as a percentage of the eligible population. This brief updates early findings from analysis of the Medicare+Choice/MA program prese...

In this report we present newly developed measures of Medicare expenditures at the hospital referral region level for 2003 to 2008. These estimates reflect a larger sample of Medicare beneficiaries than our past estimates: 20% of the fee-for-service population instead of a 5% sample as in the previous data series. These rates rely on the actual Medicare claims files rather than the Continuous M...

Outpatient prescription drug coverage is not a Medicare covered benefit. Debate continues in Congress and elsewhere on modernizing the Medicare benefit package, including proposals that would help the Nation's seniors pay for prescription drugs. Very little is known about which persons within the Medicare population have drug coverage from other sources. Using 1995 data from the Medicare Curren...

A major goal of the municipal health services program (MHSP) was improvement of health services for the elderly while containing Medicare reimbursement. A Health Care Financing Administration financed Medicare waiver program provided some additional benefits to Medicare Part B enrollees who used the MHSP clinics. Disadvantaged and sicker elderly groups were underrepresented in MHSP facilities. ...

Based on broad measures of health system quality and performance, states with more total health spending per capita have better-quality care. This fact contrasts with a previous finding that states with higher Medicare spending per enrollee have poorer-quality care. However, quality results from the total funds available and not from Medicare or any single payer. Moreover, Medicare payments are...

Medicare is continually undergoing change, as it must in order to reflect advances in medical technology, new health care delivery systems, financial pressures, and other developments. Modifications to the program are debated by policymakers in Congress and the administration, together with academic experts and others. These debates would be improved if policymakers and the public had a clearer...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether Medicare coverage policies affect utilization of services in Medicare. DATA SOURCES We constructed an analysis data set for eight different procedures using secondary data obtained from Medicare claims (1999-2002) and Medicare coverage policies posted on Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services website. STUDY DESIGN We analyzed the impact of coverage policies...

In 2006, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers the Medicare program in the United States, launched the Chronic Condition Data Warehouse (CCW). The CCW contains all Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) institutional and non-institutional claims, nursing home and home health assessment data, and enrollment/eligibility information from January 1, 1999 forward for a random 5% sa...

Publicly funded Medicare programs in the United States and Canada face daunting fiscal challenges in the decades ahead. Since 1965, the US Medicare program has provided access to physicians and hospitals for elderly Americans, and the Canadian Medicare program has provided similar coverage for Canadians of all ages since 1967. Paying for growing numbers of enrollees in these Medicare programs t...