Last week, The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released a wide-ranging overview of the Medicare program, detailing many aspects about what Medicare covers and who is covered by the program. The report is presented in sections that cover a variety of topics, including “What is Medicare”, “How is Medicare financed and what are Medicare’s future financing challenges”, and “How much do beneficiaries pay for Medicare benefits”.

Signed into law 50 years ago, Medicare provides guaranteed health care benefits for older adults and people with disabilities. Medicare now provides coverage to more than 55 million people—46.3 million receive Medicare due to age and 9 million have Medicare due to a disability. Medicare covers many important services, including prescriptions drugs, hospital visits, home health care, skilled nursing facility, hospice, and preventive services. This coverage accounted for 14 percent of the federal budget in 2013, and in recent years, spending on the Medicare program has slowed. According to KFF, Medicare spending is expected to grow at a slower rate than private insurance on a per person basis over the next decade.

KFF concludes their summary of the report by saying, “With the challenges of providing increasingly expensive medical care to an aging population and sustaining the program for the future, Medicare is likely to remain prominent on the federal policymaking agenda in the years ahead. As policymakers consider potential changes to Medicare, the effects of such changes on total health care expenditures, Medicare spending, and beneficiaries’ access to quality care and their out-of-pocket costs will be important considerations.”