medicare

April 3, 2013

Maryland is negotiating the biggest changes in its health system in four decades, even bigger than the changes facing other states, because Maryland is the only state with authority to set hospital charges that are paid by all insurers, and by uninsured patients.

Web Extra: Carmela Coyle on the growth rate of hospital costs

Web Extra: What would the change mean for Maryland hospital patients?

Web Extra: What is at stake financially with the change?

Web Extra: What would the Maryland Hospital Association have liked to see proposed that wasn't?

Medicare reform has become a central issue in the presidential campaign with both candidates vying for the senior vote. The Romney team accuses President Obama of gutting Medicare to pay for Obamacare while the President says he’s strengthening the program. The future of Medicare, and the facts about how the Affordable Health Care Act will change it, with Jonathan Weiner and Brad Herring, professors in health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Maryland is expanding funds for services that keep aging and disabled people in their homes instead of institutions. We ask Alicia Aribaje, a gerontologist at Johns Hopkins, along with Deputy Health Secretary Chuck Milligan about what it means for the elderly and the frail to stay at home.