Home Health & Hospice Week

Most MA plans don't charge copays for home care visits, study finds. If you think copayments for home care are a bad idea, you have a new study on your side. Increased copayments for doctor visits lead to a reduction in those visits for Medicare beneficiaries, according to a new study published in the latest New England Journal of Medicine. Then in the next year, hospital costs increased for those patients who had seen the doctor less. "Raising cost sharing for ambulatory care among elderly patients may have adverse health consequences and may increase total spending on health care," the study authors conclude in the abstract. The same principle can be applied to home care visits, industry observers point out. Especially when "the effects of increases in copayments for ambulatory care were magnified among enrollees living in areas of lower income and education and among enrollees who had hypertension, diabetes, [...]