Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period runs from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, 2019. If you have Medicare, this is the time to make changes to your plan. But before you do, it’s important to understand how it all works.
Here’s a quick breakdown of Medicare:
Part A covers care you get when you are in the hospital, in a skilled nursing facility, in hospice or, in very limited circumstances, when you are at home. Read more
According to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which asks Americans about healthcare topics each month, support for Medicare-for-all, which we’ve called “single–payer healthcare” in these pages, has narrowed in recent months. In a poll conducted Oct. 3 – 8, 2019, 51% of those polled said they favor a national health plan and 47% opposed. That’s a 5% drop since the beginning of the year.
It seems Americans are starting to think similarly to me – single-payer healthcare will narrow our choices when it comes to healthcare. Read more
In my lifetime, I have been blessed to see advances in medical science that literally saved my life.
In 1983, at 22 years old, I was diagnosed with a malignant form of bone cancer in my right femur. Cancer was, of course, much more of a deadly condition back then. I qualified for a clinical trial with four other male subjects who were about my age and had the same condition. I was given a brand-new chemotherapy combination in a brand-new delivery method, and within three months, 80% of my tumor was dead or inactive. Read more
Way back in 2009, when lawmakers were negotiating the Affordable Care Act, it was clear that it would cost a lot of money to pay out advanced tax credits, cost-sharing reductions and Medicaid fees for millions of newly covered people. So much money that the authors of the ACA were concerned enough to try and make the ACA revenue neutral.
Today, we are starting a new, occasional series on Straight Talk. I’m going to introduce you to some remarkable people here at Blue Cross, letting you get to know how they think and how they are leading Blue Cross in solving problems and developing innovations for the health insurance industry. Read more
From our last discussion on why prescription drugs cost so much, you might remember we introduced this graph:
