While a significant movement is underway to transform the U.S. health care system to deliver person-centered and value-based care, these efforts often place a greater emphasis on the “value-based” aspects rather than the “person-centered” aspects of the transformation.

The Health Care Transformation Task Force, a consortium of patients, payers, providers and purchasers working to accelerate the pace of U.S. health care delivery system transformation, commits to close this gap and inspire a greater focus on patient-centered care.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that the average basic premium for a Part D prescription drug plan is estimated to be $34 per month in 2017. This projected average premium is a slight increase over the average monthly premium in 2016 ($32.56) and represents the continued relative stability of Part D premiums.

According to a new issue brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the growth in total Medicare spending between 2010 and 2015 (4.4 percent) was notably lower than spending between 2000 and 2010 (9 percent). Even more remarkable, spending in the Medicare program has slowed even as enrollment in Medicare since 2011 has increased with baby boomers becoming eligible. Additionally, the average growth in spending per beneficiary each year was only 1.4 percent between 2010 and 2015, which is considerably lower than average spending growth of 7.4 percent between 2000 and 2010.

Among many measures in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) of 2016, signed into law last week by President Obama, was a Part D “lock-in” program intended to prevent people with Medicare from misusing certain prescription drugs. The Medicare Rights Center played a pivotal role in shaping the program’s consumer safeguards along with its national partners.

This week, Joe Baker, president of the Medicare Rights Center, joined the honorable Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for a roundtable discussion on how bundled payments can further ongoing efforts to transition Medicare from a volume-based payment system to one that reimburses for care coordination, quality, and innovation. Bundled payments are a reimbursement mechanism for the treatment of patients with specific conditions.

A recent issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) answers important questions about a controversial Medicare savings proposal called premium support. KFF defines premium support as “a general term used to describe an approach to reform Medicare that aims to reduce the growth in Medicare spending by increasing competition among health plans and providing a stronger incentive for beneficiaries to be cost-conscious in their plan selection.”

A new report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) highlights the demographics of people with Medicare who died in 2014 and the cost of care at the end of their life. The KFF findings on Medicare spending focus on people in traditional Medicare, since comparable data is unavailable for people enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. Still, the report findings contribute to the ongoing conversation about end-of-life care, what services people access at the end of life, and how much Medicare spends for those services.

The U.S. House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education approved a bill that would provide funding for the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) at the current level of $52.1 million, a measure applauded by the Medicare Rights Center. This comes after the Senate Appropriations Committee recently proposed eliminating SHIP funding altogether.