The percentage of working-age adults with health insurance went up and the uninsured rate dropped last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported this week. There isn’t much suspense about which way the uninsured rate is now trending, as states continue efforts to strip ineligible beneficiaries from their Medicaid rolls. But is the focus on the uninsured obscuring the struggles of the underinsured? Also, employer-sponsored insurance costs are climbing, while a mystery is unfolding in Medicare spending. And the CDC recommends everyone who’s at least 6 months old get the new covid booster. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico join KFF Health News’ Emmarie Huetteman to discuss these issues and more.
The annual U.S. Census Bureau report this week revealed a drop in the uninsured rate last year as more working-age people obtained employer coverage. However, this year’s end of pandemic-era protections which allowed many people to stay on Medicaid is likely to have changed that picture quite a bit since. Meanwhile, reports show […]
By Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano | New York Times For decades, runaway Medicare spending was the story of the federal budget. Now, flat Medicare spending might be a bigger one. Something strange has been happening in this giant federal program. Instead of growing and growing, as it always had before, spending per Medicare beneficiary […]