CMS has announced a campaign to improve Medicare beneficiaries’ use of preventive services, especially among minorities who have higher mortality rates for preventable illnesses, reports the Los Angeles Times. Currently, more than 90% of Medicare spending is for treating complications of chronic disease. "We can get healthier beneficiaries and a lot lower costs related to complications if we can get more prevention," Medicare Administrator Mark McClellan told the Times. According to one Medicare analysis, reducing the hospitalization rate by only 5% for preventable complications would result in a savings of $500 million. Yet many seniors eschew prevention services. Only 36% of female beneficiaries get Pap tests, for example, and 54% of male beneficiaries get PSA blood tests to screen for prostate cancer. The promotional campaign will be launched this summer, but some experts say Medicare should go further by making all prevention services free to beneficiaries. "Cost should not be a barrier to evidence-based preventive healthcare,” Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore’s public health commissioner, told the Times. “If something is cost-effective and it saves lives, it should be provided.”
