50 Fun Facts About Medicare

Which country revived its public health scheme in 1984 as Medicare?

Australia launched the scheme as Medibank in 1975, saw the next government cut it back, and restored it in 1984 under the name Medicare, covering everyone rather than only older people.

Which president signed Medicare into law?

Lyndon B. Johnson signed it after his 1964 landslide added dozens of pro-Medicare votes in Congress and settled the issue.

Who received the very first Medicare card at the 1965 signing ceremony?

Harry S. Truman was honoured for his failed push, as president, for national health insurance; he and his wife Bess received the first cards.

In which Missouri city was the Medicare law signed?

Independence hosted the signing; before Medicare, older Americans often couldn't get affordable coverage because private insurers saw them as a bad risk.

Which group ran Operation Coffee Cup, a 1961 campaign against health insurance for the elderly?

The American Medical Association's campaign used coffee gatherings to get acquaintances writing letters to Congress against the plan that became Medicare.

Which phrase did Sarah Palin use in 2009 to attack paying doctors for Medicare end-of-life counseling?

Death panels was named PolitiFact's 2009 Lie of the Year, because the proposal only paid doctors for voluntary talks about living wills and end-of-life options.

What is Medicare Part C better known as?

Advantage plans are run by private companies and may make members use a provider network and get a referral before seeing a specialist.

What does Medicare Part D cover?

Self-administered prescription drugs are covered through private plans, some of which make patients try cheaper generics before paying for pricier brands.

What nickname did Medicare Part D's coverage gap earn?

The donut hole was phased out after 2010 as drug makers were required to discount brand-name medicines for enrollees in that phase.

Which senator has sponsored the Senate's Medicare for All Act since 2017?

Bernie Sanders introduced it in 2017 to put all US residents on one national health insurance plan covering hospital care, drugs, and dental and vision care.

Which medicine has Medicare capped at $35 for a month's supply since 2023?

Insulin's cap came in the same 2022 law that made adult vaccines covered under Part D free and put a yearly limit on Part D drug costs.

Which workers must pay both halves of the Medicare payroll tax?

Self-employed workers pay the full 2.9 percent, but unlike wage earners they may deduct the employer-equivalent half when working out their income tax.

Medicare became law as part of which presidential reform program?

The Great Society aimed to end poverty and racial injustice, so it paired Medicare with federal school aid and new civil and voting rights laws.

Which future Florida governor ran the hospital chain Columbia/HCA until a 1997 Medicare fraud investigation?

Rick Scott left as chief executive amid the inquiry, and the company later paid $1.7 billion, at the time the largest health care fraud recovery in US history.

Whose 2011 House budget would have given future retirees payments to buy private insurance instead of Medicare?

Paul Ryan's plan kept traditional Medicare for people 55 or older, so PolitiFact named the claim that Republicans 'voted to end Medicare' its 2011 Lie of the Year.

What does a patient pay after Medicare's hospital days run out?

All costs land on the patient after day 150, because the 60 lifetime reserve days that follow day 90 can each be used only once in a lifetime.

What does Medicare call the span that ends after 60 days without hospital or nursing-facility care?

A benefit period isn't a calendar year, so a patient admitted to hospital in separate spells can owe the Part A deductible more than once a year.

What does Medicare's 'Two-Midnight Rule' decide?

Whether a stay counts as inpatient turns on whether hospital care is expected to cross two midnights; outpatients, even overnight, generally owe a copayment per service.

What must come before Medicare covers skilled nursing facility care?

A three-day inpatient stay can't include time under observation or in the emergency room before admission, even overnight, so some patients who stayed nights miss out.

What do Medicare patients usually give up to choose hospice?

Treatment to cure the illness is no longer covered, but patients have the right to stop hospice care at any time and go back to seeking a cure.

What does Medicare publish yearly to show private plans' quality?

Star ratings run from one to five, and a private health plan that earns at least four stars collects bonus payments from the government.

Under Medicare Part B, what is the patient's 20 percent share of an approved bill called?

Coinsurance applies once the yearly Part B deductible has been met, yet many preventive services, such as screening mammograms, cost the patient nothing at all.

Which items does Medicare Part B cover as durable medical equipment?

Walkers and wheelchairs qualify because they withstand repeated use, serve a medical purpose and suit the home, the tests Medicare's rule sets for durable equipment.

Which coverage lets someone delay Medicare Part B past 65 without a late penalty?

A current employer's plan earns an eight-month window to sign up once the job ends, but COBRA, retiree plans and veterans' care don't count, and the penalty lasts as long as Part B does.

In which season can anyone with Medicare join, switch or drop a plan during annual open enrollment?

Fall is the season, from October 15 to December 7, because private plans can change their costs and coverage from one year to the next; any switch starts on January 1.

What must every Part C plan include that Original Medicare lacks?

An annual out-of-pocket spending limit is required of every Part C plan, whereas Original Medicare's 20 percent share of doctor bills has no ceiling however large the bills grow.

What is the common name for private supplemental insurance that pays costs Original Medicare leaves to the patient?

Medigap policies are standardised by letter, so a Plan G from one insurer covers exactly what a Plan G from any other does, and buyers can compare on price alone.

Which Super Bowl-winning quarterback became the TV pitchman for the Medicare Coverage Helpline?

Joe Namath's ads came from a private insurance marketer, not the government, and a Senate committee report cited the campaign as an example of misleading Medicare marketing.

Which type of care is excluded from every part of Medicare?

Long-term custodial care, meaning help with bathing, dressing and eating, is excluded because it isn't medical, even for someone who needs it in a nursing home for years.

In 1972 Medicare was expanded to younger people with disabilities and to patients with which condition?

End-stage renal disease won coverage after a patient was dialysed in front of the House Ways and Means Committee in 1971; kidney failure now qualifies people for Medicare at any age.

Which condition, added in 2001, lets patients enrol in Medicare with no waiting period once disability benefits begin?

ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) usually kills within a few years of the first symptoms, so the 24-month wait that other disabled workers face would consume much of a patient's remaining life.

Which workers get Medicare through their own federal retirement board rather than the usual agency?

Railroad workers have had a federal pension system of their own since the 1930s, so the Railroad Retirement Board, rather than the agency everyone else deals with, signs them up for Medicare.

What social change did Medicare make a condition of payment in 1966?

Racial desegregation of waiting rooms and wards came fast: hospitals had to integrate to qualify for Medicare money, and formal segregation had all but ended within months of the July 1966 launch.

Before 1965, the name Medicare belonged to a 1956 federal program of medical care for which group?

Military families could see civilian doctors under the Dependents' Medical Care Act of 1956, a program the services called Medicare; it grew into CHAMPUS and then today's Tricare.

What did CMS begin removing from Medicare cards in April 2018?

Social Security numbers had doubled as the ID on every card, a gift to identity thieves; the replacement numbers are randomly generated and carry no hidden meaning.

Which law first allowed Medicare to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs?

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 reversed a ban on such haggling written into the 2003 law that created Part D, and the first negotiated prices took effect in 2026.

Medicare is the largest single funder of which stage in the making of an American doctor?

Residency training leans on Medicare payments to teaching hospitals, yet Congress capped the number of funded positions in 1997 and added no new ones for more than two decades.

What has Medicare penalised hospitals for under a program that began in 2012?

High readmission rates within 30 days of discharge can cost a hospital up to 3 percent of its Medicare payments, which pushes hospitals to plan patients' aftercare before sending them home.

Original Medicare pays for a pair of eyeglasses only after which operation?

Cataract surgery swaps the eye's clouded lens for an artificial one, so Medicare's rules class the glasses that follow as a prosthetic device; routine glasses are otherwise not covered.

Which generation will have finished turning 65, Medicare's qualifying age, by 2030?

Baby boomers, born from 1946 to 1964, have been reaching 65 at a rate of about 10,000 a day since 2011, and the youngest of them get there by 2030.

Which other health program was created by the 1965 law that set up Medicare?

Medicaid grew out of the rival idea, state-run help for the poor, which House committee chairman Wilbur Mills folded into the Medicare bill instead of choosing between the two.

Which president signed Medicare's prescription drug benefit into law?

George W. Bush signed it in 2003 after House leaders held a 3 a.m. roll call open for nearly three hours to find the last votes, the longest vote the chamber had known.

What earns most people premium-free Medicare Part A?

Ten years' work paying Medicare taxes, by the person or a spouse, is generally what makes Part A free at 65; people without enough can still buy in for several hundred dollars a month.

Medicare Part A pays hospitals a set fee per stay based on a list of what?

Diagnosis-related groups fix the fee in advance, so a hospital that treats a patient for less keeps the difference, a temptation to 'upcode' patients into a more severe, better-paid group.

Where does Original Medicare generally stop covering care?

Outside the United States, care is covered only in rare cases, yet a cruise ship's doctor can bill Medicare while the ship is within six hours of an American port.

Which 1964 presidential nominee voted against Medicare, then lost in a landslide?

Barry Goldwater's defeat that November gave Democrats their biggest majorities in Congress since the 1930s, and Medicare, stalled for years, became law the following July.

Which actor recorded a 1961 LP warning that health insurance for the elderly would bring socialized medicine?

Ronald Reagan, then a television host, called the plan a foot in the door for socialism on a record played at living-room gatherings, two decades before he became president.

Which law added an extra Medicare payroll tax on wages above $200,000?

The Affordable Care Act added 0.9 percent from 2013, and unlike the regular Medicare tax it falls on the worker alone, with no matching share from the employer.

Which life event can lower a high earner's Medicare premium surcharge?

Retiring from work counts because the surcharge is set from a tax return two years old, so without an appeal a final big salary would keep premiums high well into retirement.

Until 2015, Congress voted almost yearly to block scheduled Medicare cuts to what?

Doctors' fees were tied to a 1997 formula that kept demanding deep cuts, and Congress overrode it so regularly that the votes were nicknamed the 'doc fix'.