Predicting How Changes in Medicare's Payment Rates Would Affect Risk-Sector Enrollment and Costs.

Abstract

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) memorandum describes Medicare's risk-based sector, in which health maintenance organizations and other competitive health plans provide services at a set price per enrollee. Specifically, the memorandum estimates how enrollment in Medicare's risk-based plans might change in response to changes in Medicare's payment policies. The analysis uses predicted changes in enrollment to estimate how different payment rates would affect Medicare's costs, both in the risk-based sector and overall. The estimates presented here are valid only under the assumption that all Medicare policies other than payment rates remain the same in both the risk and fee-for-service sectors. If other policies changed as well, the effects of changing Medicare's payment rates would differ from those estimated here. In accordance with CBO's mandate to provide objective and impartial analysis, this memorandum makes no recommendations.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1997
Accession Number
ADA347280

Entities

People

  • Sandra Christensen

Organizations

  • Congressional Budget Office

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Business Administration
  • Education
  • Geographic Regions
  • Health
  • Health Care
  • Health Care Management
  • Health Maintenance Organizations
  • Health Services
  • Hospitals
  • Law
  • Medicare
  • New York
  • Prescription Drugs
  • Price Index
  • Rural Areas
  • United States
  • Urban Areas

Fields of Study

  • Medicine

Readers

  • Economics
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Medical or Health Care Field.