Analysis Finds Double Payments For Medicare, VA Plans
Medpage Today: Taxpayers Paying Twice For VA, Medicare Plans
The federal government, and by extension the taxpayer, pays "substantial and increasing" duplicate costs for healthcare among adults enrolled in both Medicare Advantage (MA) plans and the Veterans Administration (VA) health care program, a retrospective analysis determined. The estimated costs of federally funded care provided by the VA between 2004 and 2009 for individuals also covered by MA plans was $13 billion, according to Amal N. Trivedi, MD, of Providence VA Medical Center in Providence, R.I., and colleagues. And these annual costs having been increasing, rising from $1.3 billion in 2004 to a total of $3.2 billion 6 years later, the researchers reported online in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Walsh, 6/26).