This week, the Commonwealth Fund released a report that summarizes and analyzes the over 200 temporary legislative and regulatory changes that have been made to Medicare in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. They also looked at the sub-regulatory guidance that the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released to interpret these rules and to provide additional flexibility to providers and Medicare plans.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) recently expanded the functionality of the Medicare enrollment process to accommodate more online applications during the coronavirus pandemic.

This week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced new opportunities for people to enroll in Medicare or make certain changes to their coverage during the coronavirus emergency. While these temporary policies are a step in the right direction, they are too narrow and leave some without relief. More needs to be done.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently released a report detailing how financially secure or insecure Medicare beneficiaries were in 2019. Consistent with previous years, the report shows that any stereotype of baby boomers as uniformly affluent is deeply misguided. Instead, half of people with Medicare have incomes below $29,650 and one in four live on less than $17,000. Savings rates are similarly dire. Half of Medicare beneficiaries have below $73,000 in resources, one in four has less than $8,300, and about 1 in 9 has no savings or is in debt. They also face significant out-of-pocket health care expenses in absolute terms and as a percentage of their income.

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees reports were released this week. The reports include short- and long-term projections for the financial situation of the Social Security Retirement and Disability and the Medicare HI (Part A) and SMI (Part B) trust funds. The findings are largely consistent with those from 2019 and confirm the Medicare and Social Security programs are strong and built to last.

This week, the Medicare Rights Center provided comment to the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in response to a proposed rule that would dramatically affect access to benefits by cutting billions of dollars of funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also referred to as food stamps.

With more than 22 million people with Medicare (34%) enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans in 2019, the private plan alternative to the

This month, the National Health Law Program (NHeLP) released an issue brief explaining the importance of the public comment process, how to submit comments, and how comments impact the implementation of federal policies.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently announced a proposal designed to increase hospital price transparency. Under the draft

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report this week finding that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is insufficiently open about Medicaid demonstrations. Demonstrations allow states to test new approaches to delivering services under the Medicaid Program. Currently, demonstrations account for nearly a third of Medicaid spending.