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PubMed1988

Medicare's fiscal problems: an imperative for reform.

Many observers have noted that Medicare expenditures will significantly outstrip projected revenues over the course of the next 25 years. This paper examines the economic and demographic assumptions behind forecasts of Medicare hospital insurance and supplementary medical insurance expenditures and revenues and analyzes various strategies for closing the impending gap. It is argued that the present forecasts already assume considerable success in controlling hospital costs and physician payments, making substantial further savings unlikely. Shifting more of the burden onto the elderly through increased cost sharing or higher premiums also will not solve the program's fiscal problems over the long term. The remaining alternative--imposing higher income or payroll taxes on the under-65 population--is also unlikely to be a welcome solution. The authors argue that, eventually, the nation must choose between some form of a two-tier system of benefits or a Canadian-style national health insurance system.

Aged↗
PubMed1994

Health care for black and poor hospitalized Medicare patients.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze whether elderly patients who are black or from poor neighborhoods receive worse hospital care than other patients, taking account of hospital effects and using validated measures of quality of care. DESIGN: We compare quality of care provided to insured, hospitalized Medicare patients who are black or live in poor neighborhoods as compared with others, using simple and multivariable comparisons of clinically detailed measures of sickness at admission, quality, and outcomes. SETTING: Two hundred ninety-seven acute care hospitals in 30 areas within five states. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS: The sample includes a nationally representative sample of 9932 patients 65 years of age or older who lived at home prior to hospitalization for congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia, or stroke. INTERVENTIONS: This was an observational study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Processes of care, length of stay, instability at discharge, discharge destination, and mortality. RESULTS: Within rural, urban nonteaching, and urban teaching hospitals, patients who are black or from poor neighborhoods have worse processes of care and greater instability at discharge than other patients (P < .05). However, this worse quality is offset by patients who are black or from poor neighborhoods being 1.8 times more likely to receive care in urban teaching hospitals that have been shown to provide better quality of care (P < .001). Because these patients receive more of their care in better-quality hospitals, there are no overall differences in quality by race and poverty status. Death rates did not vary by race or poverty status. CONCLUSIONS: Quality of hospital care for insured Medicare patients in influenced both by the patient's race and financial characteristics and by the hospital type in which the patient receives care.

Black or African American↗
PubMed2001

Paying for Medicare: benefits, budgets, and Wilbur Mills's policy legacy.

Medicare features an unusually complex financing design. The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund pays for Part A of Medicare (hospital stays), while the Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund finances Part B (doctor visits, outpatient care, and certain home health services). At a time when Medicare policy is generating debate, this article takes a new analytical look at the origins and consequences of the program's peculiar bifurcated structure. Addressing historians of the U.S. welfare state as well as contemporary health policy reformers, the article focuses on the crucial role of legendary Ways and Means Committee chair Wilbur Mills in Medicare's enactment in 1965. The central theme of the article is that fiscal conservatism and a commitment to budgetary restraint constitute important elements of Medicare's original political understanding. Contrary to analysts who argue that Medicare's financing design has produced "perverse" effects, we argue that it has served a valuable social function by encouraging policy makers to confront periodically the costs of one of the largest and fastest-growing federal programs. An argument can be made that Medicare's original division requires modification in order to integrate health care delivery changes of the past few decades. It is crucial, however, for reformers not to lose sight of the policy goals, including fiscal rectitude, that motivated the adoption of Medicare's bifurcated structure in the first place.

Aged↗
PubMed1986

Actuarial status of the HI and SMI Trust Funds.

This article is adapted from the 1986 annual reports of the Medicare Board of Trustees. It presents a summary of the current financial and actuarial status of the Hospital Insurance (HI) and Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Funds. The Board found that the present financing schedule for the HI program is barely sufficient to ensure the payment of benefits through the late 1990's if the intermediate (II-A and II-B) assumptions underlying the estimates are realized. Although steps have been undertaken to reduce the rate of growth in payments to hospitals, the Board urges Congress to take remedial measures to bring future HI program costs and financing into balance. The Board found the SMI program to be actuarially sound but recommends that Congress take action to curtail the rapid growth in that part of Medicare.

Actuarial Analysis↗
PubMed1979

A hospital self-insurance program: employee medical benefits.

Many hospitals have explored self-insurance to help keep insurance costs down for medical malpractice and workmen's compensation. Before leaping to adopt this new approach, however, a hospital must analyze its its advantages and disadvantages, variables affecting program costs and ways to quantify the risks.

Costs and Cost Analysis↗
PubMed1993

Cost-effective health care: the Rochester experience.

Rochester, New York, has been cited repeatedly for having achieved one of the most cost-effective and efficient health care systems in the country. The determinants of the success of this system include a long history of comprehensive health planning; innovative hospital reimbursement programs; community-rated health insurance; and high levels of mutual cooperation among business, insurers, hospitals, and physicians. The Rochester system promotes the goals of access, quality, affordability, and provider satisfaction through a balanced approach to regulation and competition.

Cost-Benefit Analysis↗
PubMed1980

Hospital pharmacy in Canada.

The status of Canadian hospital pharmacy and the impact of national hospital insurance on its development are discussed. The provision of health care services for Canadians is shared by the federal and provincial governments. The federal government enacts protective and regulatory legislation, compiles health statistics, promotes research, and provides direct health care for those citizens for whom it is directly responsible. Each province is responsible for hospitals, the education and training of health care professionals, public health, and the financing and administration of health insurance for all its citizens. Largely because of line-item budget allocations and a bureaucratic tendency to equalize services for the whole population, funds for existing pharmaceutical services have been assured but the introduction of upgraded or innovative programs has been difficult to achieve. The result has been an even quality of health care services, including pharmacy, throughout the country and a deficiency in clinical pharmacy programs and the trained personnel to run them. The last decade has brought advances, however, as allocation methods have changed and both hospital and insurance administrators have recognized the patient benefits and cost effectiveness of many of the newer pharmacy programs. The main challenges facing Canadian hospital pharmacy are to upgrade clinical services and education and to improve managerial and bureaucratic competence among department directors.

Canada↗
PubMed1996

Measuring hospital outcomes from a buyer's perspective.

This study reports lessons learned from a project to develop a flexible, generalizable, and valid method for corporate buyers of hospital care that would permit them to use available secondary data to rate the outcomes quality of all hospitals in a local market area. As hospitalization insurance has moved from coverage that applied equally to all licensed hospitals to arrangements which selected a certain preferred hospital or hospitals and rejected others, the need to determine the quality of different hospitals (as well as what they would cost the insurer or buyer) has become apparent. The product of this project was the development and demonstration of a set of rating methods that build on the strengths available in large hospital discharge data bases, such as (but by no means limited to) that of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4). These measures, or others developed using these methods, deal with uncertainty in the data--its diagnosis and treatment--in a conceptually valid and practically useful way, illustrate a process that might be used in the general development of quality measures, and provide a useful critique of some other measures.

Commerce↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Average hospital charges for asthma treatment: United States, 1995.

Asthma is a chronic condition that affects some 14 to 15 million persons in the United States and is one of the most frequent causes for hospitalizations among children as well as adults. Asthma-related morbidity and mortality rates have been increasing for more than a decade in this country as have hospital admissions and visits to doctors' offices for acute episodes of this condition. In 1995, the average total hospital plus physicians' charges for treating 3,559 group health insured hospitalized asthma patients was $5,710. The highest regional charge was reported for the Pacific area states (28 percent above the U.S. average) and the lowest in the East South Central states, where the total was 20 percent below the average and 38 percent below that in the Pacific area. Variation in charges was even more pronounced between study states. Arizona, Colorado and California had average charges from 30 to 47 percent above the U.S. average, whereas Washington, Tennessee and Ohio had averages 32 to 35 percent below. Hospital charges (room and board plus ancillary fees) accounted for 92 percent of the total charge to insurance with the per diem charge averaging $1,640. Physicians' charges were less the $500 for the country as a whole but ranged from $710 in Florida (54 percent above the average) to $260 in Michigan (43 percent below the norm). The average length of stay was 3.48 days, with patients in Washington averaging 2.92 days and those in Pennsylvania and New York 4.10.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Summary of the 1983 annual reports of the Medicare Board of Trustees.

This summary presents an overview of the information contained in the annual reports of the trustees required under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act, Health Insurance for the Aged and Disabled, commonly known as Medicare. There are two basic programs under Medicare: Hospital insurance (HI), which pays for inpatient hospital care and other related care of those 65 years of age and over and of the long-term disabled. Supplementary medical insurance (SMI), which pays for physicians' services, outpatient hospital services, and other medical expenses of those 65 years of age and over and of the long-term disabled. The HI program is financed primarily by payroll taxes, with the taxes paid by current workers used to pay benefits to current beneficiaries. However, the HI program maintains a trust fund that provides a small reserve against fluctuations. This type of financing is generally known as pay-as-you-go financing. By contrast, the SMI program is financed on an accrual basis with a contingency margin. This means that the SMI trust fund should always be somewhat greater than the claims that have been incurred by enrollees but not yet paid by the program.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Actuarial Analysis↗