Description: Provides background about Prescription Drug Plans, PDPs, and the standard benefit package offered under Medicare Part D. It also provides a basic overview of the bid-development process for a PDP and summarizes some general strategies and observations used in developing the 2006 bids that will likely be used for 2007.

Description: This is an article explaining the options employers have under the Medicare Part D, or the Prescription Drug Improvement and Medicare Modernization Act - MMA - that took effect in January 2006. The article discusses 4 options under the MMA with the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Description: This is an editorial warning about the escalating costs of Medicare as outlined in the 1983 Annual Report of The Board of Trustees of The Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. The editorial ends with a question asking what the actuarial profession, and its members individually, ought to be doing that they aren’t already doing?

Description: Summary of testimony by an AAA Board member before a congressional subcommittee, as an expert on risk assessment and adjustment, especially in relation to Medicare risk contracting and HMO payments. She recommended: mitigating the geographical region values, credibility weights for payments to health plans, carving out high cost claim segments, reengineering the ACR methodology, shifting AAPCC methodology from fee-for-service toward competitive bidding, and further projects to improve risk methods.

Description: Summarizes the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, MMA. Focuses on changes to the Medicare Advantage, MA, program and the market reaction to date.

Description: Article from The Actuary, June 1971 – volume 5 - Issue 6 reviews the Advisory Council on Social Security's 1971 report on Social Security and Medicare.

Description: Highlights the recent changes to Social Security and Medicare from enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Also highlights some changes voted in by one of the houses but not by both, and therefore not enacted.

Description: This article is about the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. This Act revises the Medicare landscape by the creation of Part C - Medicare+Choice, Medical Savings Accounts, payment reforms.

Description: The article explores how deeply the Affordable Care Act reduced the Medicare Advantage benchmark payment rates and quantifies how much of that reduction Medicare Advantage Organizations earned back through quality bonuses.

Description: This article discusses Medicare cost, specifically the hospital utilization rate and the average daily cost of hospitalization and the effect of Medicare on the great increases in health care costs since 1965.