President’s Proposed 2016 Budget: The Impact on Medicare
Email from Medicare advocates--
This week, the White House released the President’s proposed fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget. Similar to years past, there are proposals that the Center endorses and proposals that cause us concern.
On the positive side, proposals we support include several that would yield savings on prescription drugs, including a new proposal that would give the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) the authority to negotiate drug prices for biologics and high cost drugs in the Part D prescription drug program. The budget would also close the Part D Donut Hole three years earlier (by 2017) than is currently planned under the Affordable Care Act. In another new proposal, the current 190-day lifetime limit on inpatient psychiatric hospital days would be eliminated, reducing a long-time barrier to true mental health parity in the Medicare program.
Among the proposals we oppose are many provisions that would shift additional costs to Medicare beneficiaries, including adding a copayment for certain home health visits, increasing the Part B deductible, further income-relating (“means testing”) Part B and D premiums, and adding a surcharge to Medicare supplemental (Medigap) policies that offer cover all or most out-of-pocket expenses. We are also concerned about proposed changes to the Medicare administrative appeals process.
For more analysis by the Center, see http://www.medicareadvocacy.org/the-presidents-proposed-fy-2016-budget-the-impact-on-medicare/.
On February 3rd, the Kaiser Family Foundation published a summary of the Medicare-related provisions in the President’s budget, available at http://kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/summary-of-medicare-provisions-in-the-presidents-budget-for-fiscal-year-2016/.
