December 1, 2001 - This issue brief points to large-scale health plan withdrawals and provider turnover in the Medicare+Choice market among reasons to delay or repeal the Medicare+Choice policy to lock beneficiaries into their plans for a specified period.
Issue Brief
October 24, 2011 - The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released its final regulations for accountable care organizations (ACOs), which are organizations made up of groups of health care providers that provide coordinated care. Check out our ACO Resource Page to read Commonwealth Fund publications and blog posts on ACOs.
Other
August 9, 2012 - This report shares the perspectives of hospitals and health systems taking part in the Premier health care alliance's accountable care implementation collaborative. Lessons relate to the need for ACOs to have certain core structural components; the viability of different organizational models; and more.
Fund Report
November 3, 2008 - In a new commentary on The Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Opinion Leaders Survey, Glenn Hackbarth outlines steps for implementing payment reform in Medicare.
Commentary
October 1, 2003 - No insurance companies now offer stand-alone prescription drug coverage. Why is this? One major factor may be that the cost of offering and administering a drug-only product is quite expensive.
Issue Brief
October 1, 1999 - Summary of Panel Discussion, New York University, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
Fund Report
December 10, 2004 - The MMA provided Medicare Advantage plans with significant increases in monthly payment rates, beginning March 2004. About one-half of the payment increases were used by plans to reduce enrollee premiums and cost-sharing and enhance benefits; providers received most of the rest.
Fund Report
August 24, 2006 - In each state, seniors face a dizzying array of Medicare Part D prescription drug plans—each with different benefit designs and formulary structures that are used to control costs, but may also affect enrollees' ability to access medications. This issue brief examines plans in the four most populous Medicare states—California, Florida, New York, and Texas.
Issue Brief
June 1, 2000 - This paper discusses four elements of the President's proposal for Medicare reforms: improving the benefit package, enhancing the management tools available for the traditional Medicare program, redirecting competition in the private plan options, and adding further resources to ensure the program's security in the coming years.
Fund Report
November 1, 2002 - Medicare+Choice plans cut back on benefits such as prescription drug coverage in 2002 while enrollees faced a 40 percent rise in monthly premiums and substantial cost-sharing increases for their health care.
Issue Brief
January 18, 2003 - Providing evidence of eroding benefits in the Medicare+Choice managed care program, this new study finds that enrollees' average plan premiums and other out-of-pocket costs rose 10 percent in 2003 to $1,964, more than double what they were in 1999.
Issue Brief
December 19, 2011 - This Commonwealth Fund–supported study examined data from 26 nursing homes involved in the Interventions to Reduce Care Transfers program, which provides nursing homes with training, tools, and resources for reducing unnecessary hospitalization.
In Brief
December 1, 1997 - The authors warn that if the changes to Medicare's home health policy brought about by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 are not implemented with caution and continually monitored, access to care may be restricted for Medicare's most vulnerable beneficiaries: poor, frail elders who need a complex mix of acute and long-term care services.
Fund Report
December 18, 2007 - This analysis, prepared for The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, finds that guaranteeing health insurance for all, when combined with policy options aimed at improving health system performance, could result in $1.5 trillion in reduced spending over the next decade.
Fund Report
August 1, 2003 - As Congress continues to debate whether and how to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare, beneficiaries with incomes near
the poverty level are in danger of being overlooked.
Issue Brief