This edition of our Five Slide Series is Medicare-focused, policy-oriented, and qualitative and opinionated in nature. We report on the achievements the Medicaid program has made in the mandatory enrollment MCO model, and convey our thoughts on testing a similar approach in Medicare.
- Keywords: Enrollment Medicaid Medicare Policy
The information tabulated and presented shows the progression of Medicare Special Needs Plan (SNP) health plan participation and SNP enrollment across the past decade – looking specifically at January of 2013, 2018, and 2023. By just about every measure, the SNP program has achieved tremendous growth.
- Keywords: Enrollment Medicare
This edition looks at the progression of capitation contracting in the Medicaid program at the national and state levels. As s a percentage of total Medicaid spending, capitation contracting has grown 31.1% in FFY2013 to 55.9% in FFY2021. National Medicaid spending via capitation was 47% larger than fee-for-service payments during FFY2021. In two states, Iowa and Hawaii, capitation payments represented more than 90% of overall Medicaid expenditures during FFY2021.
- Keywords: Expenditures Medicaid
This edition presents the progression of large publicly traded health companies’ stock prices from January 1, 2019 through July 1, 2022. Our key purpose was to summarize stock prices through the COVID pandemic relative to the year before the pandemic began. While the pandemic has been devastating to thousands of small business, the large publicly traded companies fared pretty well as a group during the pandemic. Large health companies stock prices fared even better. Health insurance companies’ stock prices rose faster still, averaging a 55% increase from January 1, 2020 to July 1, 2022).
- Keywords: COVID-19
This is our 50th edition on COVID-19. While more than 25% of the U.S. population has now been at least partially vaccinated (including two-thirds of persons above age 65!), significant differentials exist by race. Asian, Black, and Hispanic/Latino subgroups have been under-vaccinated relative to each subgroup’s share of the total population, with the White population receiving a larger share of vaccinations than their share of the population. We show that these disparities exist in nearly every state where vaccinations have been reported by race. We also show the nationwide daily progression of the seven day average in COVID cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and vaccinations throughout the pandemic, as well as per capita cases and deaths by state.
- Keywords: COVID-19
This edition tabulates the past week’s progression of cases and deaths at the state and nationwide levels. The rate of new cases per day is still quite high (nearly 30,000 nationally) but did decrease 9% during the week of April 9-16 versus the previous week. Most states are experiencing a drop-off in new cases per day. However, the rate of new cases per day increased in 16 states this past week.
COVID-attributed deaths doubled nationally between the cumulative figure as of April 9 and as of April 16.
- Keywords: COVID-19
This edition assesses the COVID death rate in the United States in a global context. The cumulative COVID death rate in the USA to date is 6.6 times higher than the rest of the world’s collective rate. Of the 160 countries whose COVID death rates have been tracked by Johns Hopkins University, the USA’s rate is 10th highest.
- Keywords: COVID-19
This edition tabulates state level information on the progression of COVID-19 cases and deaths. A significant finding is that the rate of new confirmed cases per day continues to rise sharply – the daily average increase from April 2 to April 9 was 32,734, up 54% from the prior week’s average of 21,300. The nearly 11,000 COVID-19 deaths that occurred this week are roughly twice the number of COVID deaths that occurred in all prior weeks combined.
- Keywords: COVID-19