GAO: Medicare cost-sharing update would involve trade-offs

Healthcare DIVE February 9, 2018
Meg Bryant

Dive Brief:

Modernizing the Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) cost-sharing design to include features of private plans, such as cost caps, could reduce some of the current uncertainty around beneficiaries’ annual cost-sharing burden, but would involve trade-offs, a new Government Accountability Office report finds.
GAO looked at four FFS cost-sharing designs to see how modernizing cost-sharing designs would affect beneficiaries’ costs over a period of years.
Among other things, the analysis showed that capping annual cost-sharing while maintaining Medicare’s aggregate share of costs would require a trade-off between the size of the cap and other cost-sharing responsibilities.

Dive Insight:

For example, in year one of a design with no deductible, 18% co-insurance and a $10,000 cap, the median annual cost-sharing...

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