Medicare Benefit Redesign Options: Meeting the Needs of Future Beneficiaries

The analyses conducted under this grant are intended to help frame the debate over Medicare benefit redesign. Former Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis and her team at Johns Hopkins University will develop, model, and evaluate alternative policy options to understand their effect on coverage, costs, and financing. The project will focus on three major policy reforms: 1) creating comprehensive, integrated Medicare benefits; 2) redesigning low-income beneficiary premium and cost-sharing subsidies; and 3) preventing Medicaid spend-down and nursing home institutionalization by improving Medicare’s coverage of home care. Davis’s team will analyze how these policy options might affect the level of financial burden on beneficiaries by type of service, beneficiary income level, and health status. The data sources for this work will include the Health and Retirement Study and the National Health and Aging Trends Study, both rich resources for exploring the trajectory of older adults by income, disease, and functional limitation. The findings will further our understanding of the adequacy of current financial protections for low-income beneficiaries.