Seniors

The Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Leqembi, a new Alzheimer’s drug, on July 6, 2023. This updated policy watch focuses on the implications of Medicare coverage of the drug for program spending as well as equity and affordability issues for beneficiaries, and the potential for the Inflation Reduction Act to address the spending impacts. It also covers additional details from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about patient registries.

Two new KFF analyses examine the potential impact of Medicare coverage of new prescription drugs for obesity and Alzheimer’s disease on program spending and beneficiary out-of-pocket costs, as well as the role that the Inflation Reduction Act could play in mitigating these effects. Manufacturers of both types of drugs are…

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes several provisions to lower prescription drug costs for people with Medicare and reduce drug spending by the federal government, including a number of changes to the Medicare Part D drug benefit. This brief provides an overview of the Part D benefit design and Part D enrollee cost-sharing requirements in 2023 and changes coming in 2024 and 2025.

This policy watch explores the potential implications of ending the PHE for Medicaid HCBS programs.

Published in the journal Health Affairs, this analysis compared measures of access to care, cost concerns, and satisfaction with care for beneficiaries younger than age sixty-five versus those ages sixty-five and older, using the 2019 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey.

This post provides an overview of how health care coverage and access will and won’t change when the public health emergency ends on May 11, including a discussion of COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, and telemedicine.

The brief provides a quick explainer of the prescription drug provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law on August 16, 2022 and presents new estimates on how many Medicare beneficiaries could be helped by those provisions.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes several provisions that will lower prescription drug costs for people with Medicare and reduce drug spending by the federal government. This brief summarizes these provisions and discusses the expected effects on people, program spending, and drug prices and innovation.

This brief provides an overview of Medicare spending and financing, based on the most recent historical and projected data from the Medicare Trustees and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The brief highlights trends in Medicare spending and key drivers of spending growth, including higher enrollment, growth in health care costs, and increases in payments to Medicare Advantage plans.