Healthcare Financial News

As Medicare’s Part D prescription drug program enters its fourth year, beneficiary satisfaction rates remain high, program costs remain lower than originally expected, and Medicare prescription drug plan bids reflect nationwide drug price trends, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Aug. 14.

Based on the bids submitted by Part D plans, CMS estimates that the average monthly premium that beneficiaries will pay for standard Part D coverage in 2009 will be $28. This is about 37 percent lower than originally projected when the benefit was established in 2003.

The estimated average monthly premium for 2009 of roughly $28 for basic coverage is far below the original estimate for 2009 of $44.12, which was made at the time the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) was enacted in 2003. The average expected premium for basic coverage in 2009 is about $3 higher than the actual average for 2008. The $3 premium increase is due to general trends in drug costs, the phase-out of a CMS demonstration project, and higher plan estimates for catastrophic coverage based on prior experience. Read the press release.

A report released Aug. 14 on children’s health shows that having health insurance makes an enormous difference in whether kids receive the care they need, especially if they are chronically ill. The study, released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota, shows that uninsured children are three times more likely not to visit a physician’s office in the course of a year than are insured children. Insured kids are also far more likely to have had a regular check-up.

Among the findings, kids with insurance are more likely to receive routine care. Thirty-one percent of all uninsured kids in America did not visit a physician’s office last year, compared with just nine percent of children with insurance. Three out of four insured kids (77 percent) received a “well child” check-up in the past year, compared with less than half of those without insurance (45 percent).

A Needed Lifeline: Chronically Ill Children and Public Health Insurance Coverage was released by RWJF to kick off its annual Cover the Uninsured Back-to-School Campaign, a nationwide effort to enroll eligible children in public health coverage programs during the back-to-school season. Download the report.