CMS All In On AI and Digital Health
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz championed the use of AI, agentic AI, and digital health at a recent healthcare tech conference. CMS is rapidly endorsing models to use such technology, and CMS is starting to use the technology too.
Oz argued that such tech could help reduce rural healthcare gaps and that digital health and remote patient monitoring also could reduce costs by focusing care further upstream before diseases become acute. Oz argued: “I can win the battle for health, not in the ER or in the ICU, but in your home, in your kitchen, your bedroom, in your living room, with remote patient monitoring and better tools to validate that.”
Seniors appear to be endorsing the technology too. A recent healthcare policy group KFF survey found that the vast majority of seniors are using digital health tools and are interested in making greater use of them. About eight in 10 Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older used a healthcare app or website in the last year. A sizeable majority said it made it easier to use the health system. Some lack of trust of AI must be overcome, however.
Additional article: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/himss26-dr-oz-cms-officials-push-agentic-ai-adoption
#ai #digitalhealth #cms #healthcare
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/cms-artifical-intelligence-ai-fraud-mehmet-oz-himss/814650
KFF Finds Medicare Advantage Still Robust
The past two years have led to a massive downsizing by Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. This impacted enrollees greatly in the area of benefits, products, and cost-sharing. A record 2.6 million had to find new plans for 2026. But healthcare policy group KFF also finds that the MA market remains robust. I recently did a blog on the fact that MA’s death is greatly exaggerated. See that here: https://www.healthcarelabyrinth.com/reports-of-mas-death-are-greatly-exaggerated/ . I argue MA is robust, but Capitol Hill and CMS have to look at the huge fallout just the same.
Some of what KFF just found:
- Virtually all (98.9%) Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in an MA plan that terminated coverage at the end of 2025 (2.6 million beneficiaries) have at least one MA-Part D (MA-PD) plan available in 2026, with an average of 25 MA-PD options.
- Most Medicare beneficiaries affected by a plan termination that had a zero-premium MA-PD option in 2025 also had a zero-premium MA-PD option in 2026.
- More than two-thirds (68.7%) of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in a plan that terminated coverage have at least one MA plan offered by the same insurer in 2026.
- About half (49%) of all enrollees in terminated plans were covered by small insurers.
- While 14% of 2025 MA-PD enrollees lived in a rural county, nearly one in four (23%) enrollees in a plan that terminated coverage at the end of 2025 live in a rural area.
- The impact of MA terminations at the end of 2025 varied across states, ranging from less than 5% of enrollees in 12 states to 60% or more in 6 states.
#medicareadvantage #enrollment
Federal Judge Halts Trump On Funding Cuts To Blue States
A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from cutting off $600 million in health-related grants to Illinois, California, Colorado, and Minnesota. The judge said the cuts would cause “irreparable” harm to the states.
(Article may require a subscription.)
#trump #healthcare
https://www.modernhealthcare.com/legal/mh-health-grants-cuts-democratic-states-trump
Americans Want Drug Price Relief
Healthcare policy group published a poll on Americans’ views on drugs costs and prices. KFF finds the following:
- About four in 10 U.S. adults (41%) say it is likely the Trump administration’s policies such as TrumpRx will lower prescription drug costs for people.
- A majority of the public (59%) is worried about affording prescription drugs for themselves and their families.
- The percentage of those worried about their prescription costs increases when annual incomes are less than $40,000 (67%) and for those who take at least four prescription medications (64%).
- About four in 10 (43%) U.S. adults say they have not taken their medication as prescribed in the past year due to costs.
- At least two-thirds of Democrats (77%), Republicans (68%), and independents (72%) say there is not enough government regulation when it comes to limiting prescription drug prices.
As for what party would best solve the drug price problem, nearly four in 10 voters say they trust the Democratic Party to do a better job addressing the cost of prescription drugs (38%), 10 percentage points larger than the share who say they trust the Republican Party more (28%). About one in four (27%) voters say they trust “neither party.”
Additional articles: https://www.kff.org/public-opinion/public-views-on-prescription-drug-costs-regulation-affordability-and-trumprx/ and https://www.kff.org/medicaid/5-key-facts-about-medicaid-prescription-drugs/
#drugpricing #trump
— Marc S. Ryan
