Reports Examine Medicare Payments, Medicare Advantage Plans

• "Medicare Disadvantaged and the Search for the Elusive 'Level Playing Field,'" Health Affairs: Robert Berenson, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, in a Health Affairs Web exclusive says that higher payment levels established in the new Medicare law for Medicare Advantage HMOs and preferred provider organizations will result in significant overpayments, but it remains to be seen whether Congress will maintain them as pressure grows to reduce the federal budget deficit (Berenson, Health Affairs, 12/15).
  
  
• "Medicare Advantage: Deja Vu All Over Again?" Health Affairs: In an accompanying Health Affairs Web exclusive, Brian Biles, a professor in George Washington University's Health Policy Department; Geraldine Dallek, a Washington, D.C.-based health policy consultant; and Lauren Nicholas, a doctoral candidate in the School of Social Work at Columbia University, discuss challenges facing MA plans, including making the plans understandable to beneficiaries; addressing insurers' efforts to avoid enrolling high-cost beneficiaries; ensuring stability of benefits, providers and plans; handling beneficiaries who are enrolled in unsuitable plans; providing similar levels of benefits across states; and controlling overall Medicare costs (Biles et al., Health Affairs, 12/15).