GAO-06-710 Medicare Part D: Prescription Drug Plan Sponsor Call Center Responses Were Prompt, but Not Always Accurate

To help the elderly and disabled with prescription drug costs, the Congress passed the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA), which created a voluntary outpatient prescription drug benefit (Medicare Part D). A key element of the prescription drug benefit is the low-income subsidy, or ¿extra help,¿ available to Medicare beneficiaries with limited income and resources to assist them in paying their premiums and other out-of-pocket costs. To assess the Social Security Admin¿s. implementation of the subsidy, this report provides info. on: (1) the number of applicants approved for or denied the low-income subsidy; and (2) challenges of identifying individuals eligible for the subsidy and targeting outreach efforts.

How do we understand and also assess the health care of America? Where is health care provided? What are the characteristics of those institutions which provide it? Over the short term, how are changes in health care provisions affecting the health of the population, the cost of care, and access to care?. Health Care Delivery in the United States, now in a thoroughly updated and revised 9th edition, discusses these and other core issues in the field. Under the editorship of Dr. Kovner and with the addition of Dr. James Knickman, Senior VP of Evaluation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, leading thinkers and practitioners in the field examine how medical knowledge creates new healthcare services. Emerging and recurrent issues from wide perspectives of health policy and public health are also discussed. With an easy to understand format and a focus on the major core challenges of the delivery of health care, this is the textbook of choice for course work in health care, the reference for administrators and policy makers, and the standard for in-service training programs.;chapter

The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution was established to foster policy innovation from leading economic thinkers—ideas based on evidence and experience, not ideology and doctrine. The overall goal is to promote America's long-term economic growth, and economic security for American families. This important book brings The Hamilton Project's approach to one of the most critical issues facing Americans today—health care. In Who Has the Cure? a team of noted economists and policy analysts emphasizes the importance of universal health care—not just its value to individual and families, but also the overall economy. They examine in detail four policy alternatives for achieving universal health insurance coverage that would also improve efficiency in the health care industry. The contributors to this volume also evaluate proposales designed to make health care more affordable and effective. Among the possible strategies studied here are an expansion of preventive care, income-related cost sharing, and reform of Medicare's prescription drug benefit.