The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) have released a new data book, "Beneficiaries Dually Eligible for Medicare and Medicaid." The merging of data to help inform Congress on the critical issue of dually eligible beneficiaries is an important step that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa has advocated. Grassley has previously used information that was produced from jointly reconciled data by the two organizations that was the precursor to this report. Grassley made the following comment on this development.
"Providing better coordinated care and reducing costs for high-cost beneficiaries is critical for the future of Medicare and Medicaid. All of us need to understand the needs and the costs of covering the dually eligible and other high-cost beneficiaries before we can find rational ways to control costs and preserve needed services. I appreciate the work of these two expert commissions to inform the debate."
The joint analysis is available here.
