• 1960: PL 86-778
Social Security Amendments of 1960 (Kerr-Mills aid) • 1965: PL 89-97
Social Security Act of 1965, Establishing Medicare Benefits • 1980: Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980, prescription drugs coverage added • 1988: PL 100-360 Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 • 1997: PL 105-33
Balanced Budget Act of 1997 • 2003: PL 108-173
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act • 2010:
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and
Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 • 2013: Sequestration effects on Medicare due to
Budget Control Act of 2011 • 2015: Extensive changes to Medicare, primarily to the SGR provisions of the
Balanced Budget Act of 1997 as part of the
Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) • 2016: Changes to the Social Security "hold harmless" laws as they affect Part B premiums based on the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 • 2022:
Inflation Reduction Act included Medicare negotiation provisions, allowing negotiation of prescription drug prices beginning in 2026 In 1977, the
Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) was established as a federal agency responsible for the administration of Medicare and Medicaid. This would be renamed to
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2001. By 1983, the
diagnosis-related group (DRG) replaced pay for service reimbursements to hospitals for Medicare patients. President
Bill Clinton attempted an overhaul of Medicare through his
health care reform plan in 1993–1994 but was unable to get the legislation passed by Congress. In 2003,
Congress passed the
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, which President
George W. Bush signed into law on December 8, 2003. Part of this legislation included filling gaps in prescription-drug coverage left by the Medicare Secondary Payer Act that was enacted in 1980. The 2003 bill strengthened the Workers' Compensation Medicare Set-Aside Program (WCMSA) that is monitored and administered by CMS. On August 1, 2007, the US House of Representatives voted to reduce payments to Medicare Advantage providers in order to pay for expanded coverage of children's health under the
SCHIP program. As of 2008, Medicare Advantage plans cost, on average, 13 percent more per person insured for like beneficiaries than direct payment plans. Many health economists have concluded that payments to Medicare Advantage providers have been excessive. The Senate, after heavy lobbying from the insurance industry, declined to agree to the cuts in Medicare Advantage proposed by the House. President Bush subsequently vetoed the SCHIP extension.
Effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act The
Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 made a number of changes to the Medicare program. Several provisions of the law were designed to reduce the cost of Medicare. The most substantial provisions slowed the growth rate of payments to hospitals and skilled nursing facilities under Part A of Medicare, through a variety of methods (e.g., percentage cuts, penalties for readmissions). Congress also attempted to reduce payments to public Part C Medicare health plans by aligning the rules that establish Part C plans' capitated fees more closely with the FFS paid for comparable care to "similar beneficiaries" under Parts A and B of Medicare. Primarily these reductions involved much discretion on the part of CMS. Examples of what CMS did, included effectively ending a Part C program Congress had previously initiated to increase the use of Part C in rural areas (the so-called Part C PFFS plan) and reducing over time a program that encouraged employers and unions to create their own Part C plans not available to the general Medicare beneficiary base (so-called Part C EGWP plans) by providing higher reimbursement. These two types of Part C plans had been identified by MedPAC as the programs that most negatively affected parity between the cost of Medicare beneficiaries on Parts A/B/C and the costs of beneficiaries not on Parts A/B/C. These efforts to reach parity have been more than successful. As of 2015, all beneficiaries on A/B/C cost 4% less per person than all beneficiaries not on A/B/C. But whether that is because the cost of the former decreased or the cost of the latter increased is not known. PPACA also slightly reduced annual increases in payments to physicians and to hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of low-income patients. Along with other minor adjustments, these changes reduced Medicare's projected cost over the next decade by $455 billion. Additionally, the PPACA created the
Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which was empowered to submit legislative proposals to reduce the cost of Medicare if the program's per-capita spending grows faster than per-capita GDP plus one percent. The IPAB was never formed and was formally repealed by the Balanced Budget Act of 2018. The PPACA also made some changes to Medicare enrollees' benefits. By 2020, it "closed" the so-called "donut hole" between Part D plans' initial spend phase coverage limits and the catastrophic cap on out-of-pocket spending, reducing a Part D enrollees' exposure to the cost of prescription drugs by an average of $2,000 a year. That is, the template co-pay in the gap (which legally still exists) will be the same as the template co-pay in the initial spend phase, 25%. This lowered costs for about 5% of the people on Medicare. Limits were also placed on out-of-pocket costs for in-network care for public Part C health plan enrollees. Most of these plans had such a limit but ACA formalized the annual out of pocket spend limit. Beneficiaries on traditional Medicare do not get such a limit but can effectively arrange for one through private insurance. Meanwhile, Medicare Part B and D premiums were restructured in ways that reduced costs for most people while raising contributions from the wealthiest people with Medicare. The law also expanded coverage of or eliminated co-pays for some preventive services. The PPACA instituted a number of measures to control Medicare fraud and abuse, such as longer oversight periods, provider screenings, stronger standards for certain providers, the creation of databases to share data between federal and state agencies, and stiffer penalties for violators. The law also created mechanisms, such as the
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to fund experiments to identify new payment and delivery models that could conceivably be expanded to reduce the cost of health care while improving quality. The basic concept behind the proposals is that the government would make a defined contribution, that is a premium support, to the health plan of a Medicare enrollee's choice. Sponsors would compete to provide Medicare benefits and this competition would set the level of fixed contribution. Additionally, enrollees would be able to purchase greater coverage by paying more in addition to the fixed government contribution. Conversely, enrollees could choose lower cost coverage and keep the difference between their coverage costs and the fixed government contribution. The goal of premium Medicare plans is for greater cost-effectiveness; if such a proposal worked as planned, the financial incentive would be greatest for Medicare plans that offer the best care at the lowest cost. Premium support proposals, such as the 2011 plan proposed by Senator
Ron Wyden and Rep.
Paul Ryan (
R–
Wis.), have aimed to avoid risk selection by including protection language mandating that plans participating in such coverage must provide insurance to all beneficiaries and are not able to avoid covering higher risk beneficiaries. Some critics are concerned that the Medicare population, which has particularly high rates of cognitive impairment and dementia, would have a hard time choosing between competing health plans. Robert Moffit, a senior fellow of
The Heritage Foundation responded to this concern, stating that while there may be research indicating that individuals have difficulty making the correct choice of health care plan, there is no evidence to show that government officials can make better choices. Some have argued that, as the population ages and the ratio of workers to retirees increases, programs for the elderly need to be reduced. Since the age at which Americans can retire with full Social Security benefits has risen from 65 to 67, it is argued that the age of eligibility for Medicare should rise with it (though people can begin receiving reduced Social Security benefits as early as age 62). The CBO projected that raising the age of Medicare eligibility would save $113 billion over 10 years after accounting for the necessary expansion of Medicaid and state health insurance exchange subsidies under health care reform, which are needed to help those who could not afford insurance purchase it. The
Kaiser Family Foundation found that raising the age of eligibility would save the federal government $5.7 billion a year, while raising costs for other payers. According to Kaiser, raising the age would cost $3.7 billion to 65- and 66-year-olds, $2.8 billion to other consumers whose premiums would rise as insurance pools absorbed more risk, $4.5 billion to employers offering insurance, and $0.7 billion to states expanding their Medicaid rolls. Ultimately Kaiser found that the plan would raise total social costs by more than twice the savings to the federal government. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden proposed lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 60 years old. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that lowering the age to 60 could reduce costs for employer health plans by up to 15% if all eligible employees shifted to Medicare.
Negotiating the prices of prescription drugs Currently, people with Medicare can get prescription drug coverage through a public Medicare Part C plan or through the standalone Part D prescription drug plans (PDPs) program. Each plan sponsor establishes its own coverage policies and could, if desired, independently negotiate the prices it pays to drug manufacturers. But because each plan has a much smaller coverage pool than the entire Medicare program, many argue that this system of paying for prescription drugs undermines the government's bargaining power and artificially raises the cost of drug coverage. Conversely, negotiating for the sponsors is almost always done by one of three or four companies typically tied to pharmacy retailers each of whom alone has much more buying power than the entire Medicare program. That pharmacy-centric versus government-centric approach appears to have worked given that Part D has cost 50% or more under original projected spending and has held average annual drug spending by seniors in absolute dollars fairly constant for over 10 years. Many look to the
Veterans Health Administration (VHA) as a model of lower cost prescription drug coverage. Since the VHA provides healthcare directly, it maintains its own formulary and negotiates prices with manufacturers. Studies show that the VHA pays substantially less for drugs than the PDP plans Medicare Part D subsidizes. One analysis found that adopting a formulary similar to the VHA's would save Medicare $14 billion a year. There are other proposals for savings on prescription drugs that do not require such fundamental changes to Medicare Part D's payment and coverage policies. Manufacturers who supply drugs to Medicaid are required to offer a 15 percent rebate on the average manufacturer's price. Low-income elderly individuals who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid receive drug coverage through Medicare Part D, and no reimbursement is paid for the drugs the government purchases for them. Reinstating that rebate would yield savings of $112 billion, according to a recent CBO estimate. Some have questioned the ability of the federal government to achieve greater savings than the largest PDPs, since some of the larger plans have coverage pools comparable to Medicare's, though the evidence from the VHA is promising. Some also worry that controlling the prices of prescription drugs would reduce incentives for manufacturers to invest in research and development, though the same could be said of anything that would reduce costs.—and high costs. Average annual per-capita spending for "dual-eligibles" is $20,000, compared to $10,900 for the Medicare population as a whole. There is substantial evidence that these individuals receive highly inefficient care because responsibility for their care is split between the Medicare and Medicaid programs—most see a number of different providers without any kind of mechanism to coordinate their care, and they face high rates of potentially preventable hospitalizations. Because Medicaid and Medicare cover different aspects of health care, both have a financial incentive to shunt patients into care the other program pays for. Many experts have suggested that establishing mechanisms to coordinate care for the dual-eligibles could yield substantial savings in the Medicare program, mostly by reducing hospitalizations. Such programs would connect patients with primary care, create an individualized health plan, assist enrollees in receiving social and human services as well as medical care, reconcile medications prescribed by different doctors to ensure they do not undermine one another, and oversee behavior to improve health. The general ethos of these proposals is to "treat the patient, not the condition," though there are some questions about private Medicare plans' capacity to manage care and achieve meaningful cost savings. Estimated savings from more effective coordinated care for the dual eligibles range from $125 billion mostly by eliminating unnecessary, expensive hospital admissions.
Income-relating Medicare premiums Both House Republicans and President Obama proposed increasing the additional premiums paid by the wealthiest people with Medicare, compounding several reforms in the ACA that would increase the number of wealthier individuals paying higher, income-related Part B and Part D premiums. Such proposals were projected to save $20 billion over the course of a decade, and would ultimately result in more than a quarter of Medicare enrollees paying between 35 and 90 percent of their Part B costs by 2035, rather than the typical 25 percent. If the brackets mandated for 2035 were implemented today, it would mean that anyone earning more than $47,000 (as an individual) or $94,000 (as a couple) would be affected. Under the Republican proposals, affected individuals would pay 40 percent of the total Part B and Part D premiums, which would be equivalent of $2,500. More limited income-relation of premiums only raises limited revenue. Currently, 5 percent of Medicare enrollees pay an income-related premium, and most pay 35 percent of their total costs (on average), compared to the 25 percent most people pay. Only a negligible number of enrollees fall into the higher income brackets required to bear a more substantial share of their costs—roughly half a percent of individuals and less than three percent of married couples currently pay more than 35 percent of their total Part B costs. There is some concern that tying premiums to income would weaken Medicare politically over the long run, since people tend to be more supportive of universal social programs than of
means-tested ones.
Medigap restrictions Some Medicare supplemental insurance (or "Medigap") plans cover all of an enrollee's cost-sharing, insulating them from any out-of-pocket costs and guaranteeing financial security to individuals with significant health care needs. Many policymakers believe that such plans raise the cost of Medicare by creating a
perverse incentive that leads patients to seek unnecessary, costly treatments. Many argue that unnecessary treatments are a major cause of rising costs and propose that people with Medicare should feel more of the cost of their care to create incentives to seek the most efficient alternatives. Various restrictions and surcharges on Medigap coverage have appeared in some deficit reduction proposals. One of the furthest-reaching reforms proposed, which would prevent Medigap from covering any of the first $500 of coinsurance charges and limit it to covering 50 percent of all costs beyond that, could save $50 billion over 10 years. But it would also increase health care costs substantially for people with costly health care needs. There is some evidence that claims of Medigap's tendency to cause over-treatment may be exaggerated and that potential savings from restricting it might be smaller than expected. Meanwhile, there are some concerns about the potential effects on enrollees. Individuals who face high charges with every episode of care have been shown to delay or forgo needed care, jeopardizing their health and possibly increasing their health care costs over time. Given their lack of medical training, most patients tend to have difficulty distinguishing between necessary and unnecessary treatments. The problem could be exaggerated among the Medicare population, which has low levels of health literacy.
Vision Coverage The
Build Back Better legislation was passed in Congress in November 2021, and adds hearing services subject to Medicare Part B deductible and 20% coinsurance beginning in 2023. The initial proposal of this bill also aimed to address gaps in Medicare such as dental and vision coverage, however both services were removed following objections in the Senate. A study performed by Urban Institute showed that Medicare enrollees spend more on routine vision services ($8.4 billion) than routine hearing services ($5.7 billion), of which $5.4 billion and $4.7 billion were spent out of pocket respectively. In addition, nearly 1 in 3 Medicare beneficiaries used vision services annually, and averages a spending of $411 per person;
Medicare for All The
Medicare for All Act would dramatically expand the Medicare program to cover all US residents with automatic enrollment upon birth or residency providing coverage for items and services that are medically necessary to maintain health or to diagnose, treat, or rehabilitate a health condition, including hospital services, prescription drugs, mental health and substance abuse treatment, dental and vision services, home- and community-based long-term care, gender affirming care, and reproductive care, including contraception and abortions. The bill was first introduced in the
US House of Representatives by Representative
John Conyers in 2003. The act was most recently introduced in the US Senate by
Senator Bernie Sanders on May 17, 2023. ==Legislative oversight==