Health
Medicare Open Enrollment Ends Dec. 7: Comparing coverage options could save you money
(Family Features) If you’re enrolled in Medicare, it’s important to remember Medicare Open Enrollment is open through Dec. 7 each year. It is the time for people with Medicare to compare their prescription drug and health coverage options for the upcoming year.
It is important to compare your options because plans can change every year – even your current choice may be changing. Your health needs can change, too. By comparing all your options, you could save money, find a coverage option better tailored to your needs or both.
How to Compare Prescription Drug and Health Coverage Options
Medicare.gov is the official source for information about Medicare and Open Enrollment. You may see enrollment information from various insurance companies and other sources. Start at Medicare.gov to get unbiased information to find the type of coverage that best meets your needs.
Comparing prescription drug and health coverage options is easy at Medicare.gov. You can input the list of medications you are taking and conduct a side-by-side comparison of plan coverage, costs and quality ratings. If you are happy with your current choice, you don’t have to do anything. If you choose a new option for 2024, you can enroll right there.
Before you enroll in a plan, consider the following:
- Check if your health care providers are in a plan’s network.
- Check if your prescriptions are included on a plan’s formulary and if the plan works with your pharmacy.
- Check the plan’s Star Rating on Medicare.gov to see how it performs on quality, customer service and more.
- Remember low monthly premiums may not always be the best overall value for your specific needs.
- Review a plan’s estimated total costs to you, including deductible and other out-of-pocket costs.
- Check if Medicare Advantage plans offer extra benefits, like vision, hearing or dental coverage, if you need these services.
- Remember that you may need a referral or prior authorization for some services under Medicare Advantage plans.
Vaccine, Insulin and Drug Cost Savings
Improvements to the Medicare program are adding up to savings and improved access to affordable treatments because of the Inflation Reduction Act.
- Insulin: If you have Medicare and take insulin, you’ll pay no more than $35 for a month’s supply of each covered insulin. This includes people who have Medicare drug coverage (Part D) and all Part B covered insulins.
- Vaccines: People with Medicare drug coverage will pay nothing out of pocket for adult vaccines, including the shingles vaccine, that are recommended by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
- Drug Cost Savings: In 2024, people enrolled in Part D who have very high drug costs will get some relief. Once they reach a certain threshold on paying out-of-pocket costs – what we call the catastrophic phase – they will no longer have additional cost sharing or copays at the pharmacy.
Medicare Can Help
To compare options and find the best coverage to fit your needs:
- Visit Medicare.gov and conduct side-by-side comparisons of costs and coverage.
- Call 1-800-MEDICARE. Help is available 24 hours a day, including weekends.
- Access personalized health insurance counseling in your community at no cost, available from your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP). Visit shiphelp.org or call 1-800-MEDICARE for locations near you.
Medicare Options
There are two main ways to get Medicare coverage: Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage (Medicare-approved plans from private companies). There are differences between the two that are important to understand when reviewing your coverage options.
- With Original Medicare, you get your health care through Medicare Parts A and B. You can join a separate drug plan to get Medicare drug coverage (also called Part D). And you can see any doctor that takes Medicare anywhere in the U.S.
- Medicare Advantage is an alternative that usually bundles your health and drug coverage all in one plan. Some plans may offer extra benefits that Original Medicare doesn’t cover – like certain vision, hearing and dental services. In many cases, you can only use doctors who are in the plan’s network.
If you are new to Medicare or need to review the ways you can get your Medicare coverage, visit Medicare.gov and click “Get Started with Medicare.”
Extra Help with Prescription Drug Costs
If you are struggling with prescription drug costs, Extra Help is a Medicare program that can help pay for your drug coverage (Part D) premiums, deductibles, coinsurance and other costs. If you make less than $22,000 a year ($30,000 for married couples), it’s worth it to apply. Visit ssa.gov/extrahelp or call the Social Security Administration at 1-800-772-1213 to apply. The program will expand to cover more drug costs for people with limited resources in 2024. People who qualify for Extra Help generally will pay no more than $4.50 for each generic drug and $11.20 for each brand-name drug.
Information provided by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Photos courtesy of Getty Images
SOURCE:
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
(Family Features) Antes de la llegada de los antibióticos, las enfermedades infecciosas, como la neumonía, la tuberculosis y la difteria, eran las causas de muerte más comunes en el mundo industrializado. Hoy en día, la enfermedad cardíaca es la principal causa de muerte en los Estados Unidos y lo ha sido desde 1921, según los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades.
Sin embargo, más de la mitad de las personas en los EE. UU. (51%) no son conscientes de ese hecho, según una encuesta de Harris Poll realizada en nombre de la Asociación Estadounidense del Corazón. Es más, casi la mitad de todas las personas en los EE. UU. (48,6 %) tienen algún tipo de enfermedad cardiovascular (ECV), incluida enfermedad coronaria, insuficiencia cardíaca, ataques cerebrales o, más notablemente, presión arterial alta, según la actualización estadística anual, “Estadísticas de enfermedades cardíacas y ataques cerebrales de 2024: un informe de datos estadounidenses y globales de la American Heart Association”, publicado en “Circulation”.
“Las enfermedades cardíacas, junto con los ataques cerebrals, que son la quinta causa de muerte, cobran más vidas en los EE. UU. que todas las formas de cáncer y enfermedades crónicas de las vías respiratorias inferiores combinadas, según los datos más recientes disponibles”, dijo Joseph C. Wu, M.D., Ph.D., FAHA, presidente voluntario de la American Heart Association director del Instituto Cardiovascular de Stanford y profesor Simon H. Stertzer de Medicina y Radiología en la Facultad de Medicina de Stanford. “Descubrir que la mayoría de la gente no conoce el impacto significativo de las enfermedades cardíacas es desalentador e incluso un poco aterrador”.
Si bien las tasas de mortalidad por enfermedades cardiovasculares han disminuido un 60% desde 1950 y el número de personas en los EE. UU. que mueren por un ataque cardíaco ha disminuido de 1 de cada 2 en los años 50 a aproximadamente 1 de cada 8 en la actualidad, aún persisten desafíos.
En 2024, con Bold Hearts, la celebración del centenario de la American Heart Association, la organización celebra 100 años de progreso e identificó varias cuestiones que deben abordarse para que el próximo siglo de trabajo para salvar vidas sea tan impactante como los primeros 100 años:
- Se debe mejorar la alfabetización científica para aumentar el conocimiento y la comprensión del público sobre los métodos y la interpretación de los datos científicos.
- Se necesitan enfoques no tradicionales de atención de salud para abordar los determinantes sociales y estructurales de la salud, trasladando rápidamente enfoques basados en evidencia a las comunidades para abordar la inseguridad alimentaria, los problemas de transporte, la educación, la vivienda, el acceso a la atención, el estrés psicosocial crónico y otros problemas sociales. necesidades.
- La interconexión de los sistemas de órganos, los mecanismos de las enfermedades y las etapas de la vida son fundamentales para comprender el papel que desempeña la salud cardiovascular en la salud general.
- La valoración de los sistemas de atención será importante para lograr beneficios clínicos significativos. Depender de médicos individuales puede no ser realista en el manejo de enfermedades que involucran múltiples sistemas de órganos, como enfermedades cardiovasculares, renales y metabólicas o trastornos que afectan al corazón, el cerebro y la mente simultáneamente.
- Más financiación para la investigación es una necesidad crítica debido al ritmo de los avances científicos. En el próximo siglo, los experimentos de laboratorio pueden exigir equipos más sofisticados, la ciencia traslacional incorporará nuevas tecnologías costosas como la inteligencia artificial y la salud de la población requerirá mayor potencia informática y tamaños de muestra más grandes.
“Hay mucho que aprender de este cambio histórico en la reducción de muertes por enfermedades infecciosas y la prevalencia actual de muertes por enfermedades cardiovasculares”, afirmó Wu. “Gracias a la investigación científica, los avances tecnológicos y las políticas de salud pública, la mayoría de estas enfermedades infecciosas se han controlado y muchas han sido erradicadas o casi lo están. A medida que aplicamos estos mismos métodos clínicos y epidemiológicos a la esperanzadora erradicación de las enfermedades cardíacas y los ataques cerebrales, la Asociación Estadounidense del Corazón está logrando grandes avances. Aunque todavía mueren demasiadas personas cada año, muchas viven vidas más largas y productivas mientras controlan sus enfermedades cardiovasculares y sus factores de riesgo”.
Para obtener más información, visite heart.org/centennial.
SOURCE:
American Heart Association
(Family Features) People with outward appearances of success, productivity and happiness often still deal with internal struggles. Mental health challenges continue to affect Americans, with nearly 3 of 4 (73%) U.S. adults reporting struggles with mental health in 2023.
These findings come from a mental health survey commissioned by RedBox Rx, a telehealth and online pharmacy provider, and conducted by Morning Consult.
“Mental health remains a struggle for many Americans,” said Dr. Daniel Fick, RedBox Rx’s chief medical officer. “The findings from this study demonstrate more resources and support are needed to help individuals manage their mental health, especially younger adults. We are focused on fulfilling this need by offering easy-to-access, affordable, discreet and convenient telehealth care and treatment for those struggling with mental health.”
In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, consider these mental health trends identified in the survey:
1. Younger Generations are More Likely to Report Mental Health Struggles, Worsening Mental Health
Gen Zers and Millennials are more likely to report having mental health struggles and more likely to say those struggles worsened in the past year. In fact, 41% of Gen Zers and 36% of Millennials reported more mental health struggles in the past year compared with 21% of adults ages 45 and older.
2. Specific Life Events Affect People Differently
Some life events appear to affect people differently. For example, getting divorced or separated and becoming pregnant or having a child are linked with both worsening and improving mental health. Getting engaged or married and using a dating app are equally likely to be linked with both positive and negative impacts on mental health.
3. Younger Generations Endure Life Events Linked with Worsening Mental Health
Gen Zers and Millennials more frequently experience life events having the strongest links to worsening mental health. They more commonly report loneliness and a failure to achieve life goals, stressors also linked to worsening mental health. For example, 53% of Gen Zers reported feelings of loneliness and 52% shared feelings of failure to achieve life goals, compared with 39% and 34%, respectively, of all adults sampled.
The research also found recent life experiences, whether relational or personal, are linked to the state of one’s mental health. Those suffering from worsening mental health were more likely to have experienced:
- Being a victim of verbal or emotional abuse
- Being a victim of physical violence
- The lack of a healthy home environment
- The lack of a healthy work environment
- Attending college or university
- The breakdown in a relationship with a close family member
According to the study, if you’ve experienced verbal or emotional abuse – which is 12% more prevalent among Gen Zers – you are more than twice as likely to report worsening mental health.
4. Despite Mental Health Struggles, Most Americans Aren’t Seeking Professional Care
Even though mental health struggles are widespread among American adults, more than 6 out of 10 (63%) with consistent or worsening mental health struggles have not sought professional care, such as therapy or medications, in the past year.
Those not seeking care tend to downplay their situations or cite the cost of care as a barrier. Through its discreet, low-cost service model, RedBox Rx’s online platform makes it easy for patients to quickly schedule telehealth visits and privately meet with licensed medical providers to get help with treating a variety of mental health conditions including anxiety and depression, adult ADHD and insomnia.
“Telehealth offers an effective and convenient way for patients to easily access care for mental health conditions,” Fick said.
To view the full report, access infographics from the study and find more information about mental health therapy and medical treatments, visit RedBoxRx.com.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock (woman using tablet)
SOURCE:
RedBox Rx
(Family Features) Before the advent of antibiotics, infectious diseases, such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and diphtheria, were the most common causes of death in the industrialized world. Today, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and has been since 1921, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, more than half of people in the U.S. (51%) aren’t aware of that fact, according to a Harris Poll survey conducted on behalf of the American Heart Association. What’s more, nearly half of all people in the U.S. (48.6%) have some type of cardiovascular disease (CVD), including coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke or, most notably, high blood pressure, according to the annual statistical update, “2024 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics: A Report of U.S. and Global Data From the American Heart Association,” published in “Circulation.”
“Heart disease along with stroke, which is the fifth-leading cause of death, claim more lives in the U.S. than all forms of cancer and chronic lower respiratory disease combined, based on the most recent data available,” said Joseph C. Wu, M.D., Ph.D., FAHA, volunteer president of the American Heart Association, director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and the Simon H. Stertzer Professor of Medicine and Radiology at Stanford School of Medicine. “Finding that most people do not know the significant impact of heart disease is discouraging and even a bit frightening.”
While death rates from CVD have declined 60% since 1950 and the number of people in the U.S. dying from heart attack has dropped from 1 in 2 in the ’50s to about 1 in 8 today, challenges still remain.
In 2024, with Bold Hearts – the American Heart Association’s centennial celebration – the organization celebrates 100 years of progress and identified several issues that must be addressed to make the next century of life-saving work as impactful as the first 100 years:
- Scientific literacy must be enhanced to increase public knowledge and understanding about the methods and interpretation of scientific data.
- Non-traditional approaches to health care are needed to address the social and structural determinants of health by moving evidence-based approaches rapidly into communities to address food insecurity, transportation problems, education, housing, access to care, chronic psychosocial stress and other social needs.
- The interconnectedness of organ systems, mechanisms of disease and stages of life are critical to understanding the role cardiovascular health plays in overall health.
- Appreciation of systems of care will beimportant to achieving significant clinical benefits. Reliance on individual physicians may not be realistic in managing diseases involving multiple organ systems such as cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic disease or disorders affecting the heart, brain and mind simultaneously.
- More funding for research is a critical need due to the pace of scientific advances. In the next century, laboratory experiments may demand more sophisticated equipment, translational science will incorporate expensive new technologies like artificial intelligence and population health will require greater computing power and larger sample sizes.
“There is much to learn from this historic shift in the reduction of deaths from infectious diseases and the current prevalence in deaths from cardiovascular diseases,” Wu said. “Through scientific research, technological advances and public health policy, most of these infectious diseases have become controlled, and many have been or are nearly eradicated. As we apply these same clinical and epidemiological methods to the someday hopeful eradication of heart disease and stroke, the American Heart Association is making great progress. Although still too many people die each year, many are living longer, more productive lives while managing their cardiovascular disease and risk factors.”
To learn more, visit heart.org/centennial.
SOURCE:
American Heart Association
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