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Preventive care plays a central role in maintaining long-term health, particularly among older adults and individuals with disabilities. Services such as annual wellness visits, cancer screenings, cardiovascular assessments, and vaccinations are designed to detect conditions early or prevent them altogether. Yet access to these services often depends on insurance coverage. In the United States, Medicare eligibility marks a significant turning point in how individuals engage with preventive care.
Understanding when and how a person becomes eligible for Medicare can shape healthcare decisions, provider relationships, and overall utilization of preventive services.
Photo by Pixabay[/caption]
Navigating Medicare can feel like wandering through a maze, even for the most diligent seniors. Between dozens of plan options, coverage details, and deadlines, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
That’s where can Cigna Medicare Advantage plans stand out. Beyond standard medical coverage, they offer hidden perks that make your healthcare simpler, more rewarding, and surprisingly affordable. Let’s explore the lesser-known benefits that can help you make the most of your plan.
There are countless options in Medicare, and the coverage levels can vary widely. It doesn’t help that people find terminologies to be confusing, and for individuals who are approaching retirement, selecting the right plan that aligns with their health needs is very important. Everything should also be aligned with their financial situation, and fortunately, with a little planning, you can manage a plan that’s right for you.
Know that it’s all about understanding the basic structure that’s part of Medicare, and you should know what parts are going to work well together. The additional benefits can also be added through supplemental plans, and if you’re new to the system, you need to make sure that you’re receiving something at a price that’s affordable for you. It’s natural to ask, which Medicare plan is best for me, but the answer depends entirely on your lifestyle.
Frank F Zhou[/caption]
Frank F. Zhou | he/him
MD Candidate, Class of 2025
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What is Lecanemab used for? How is it given to patients?
Response: Lecanemab is a new infusion therapy for Alzheimer's disease. Its dosing is based on each patient's body weight (10 mg/kg every two weeks), but the drug is only available in 500 mg and 200 mg single-use vials, meaning that any leftover drug in vials must be thrown away. Given that lecanemab is expected to cost Medicare billions of dollars each year, we hypothesized that discarded drug could result in significant wasteful spending.
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As we get older, managing our health becomes even more important. Aging can bring new health challenges, from needing to manage multiple medications to maintaining physical activity and mental sharpness. Having a clear plan for health management is essential to help older individuals stay active, healthy, and independent. Proper attention to medications, diet, exercise, and regular check-ups enable older adults to maintain a good quality of life.
Health management doesn't have to be complicated. Simple steps, like regular doctor visits, staying on top of medications, and eating well, can make a big difference.
This guide will cover practical strategies to help older individuals take control of their health, stay active, and enjoy life to the fullest.
As healthcare continues to evolve, more attention is being given to senior health, and wellness programs are increasingly becoming a cornerstone of comprehensive senior care.
Wellness programs focus on improving quality of life and managing chronic conditions through proactive measures such as exercise, nutrition, mental health support, and preventive care.
For seniors, these programs are especially valuable because they address the unique challenges that come with aging. As part of senior health plans, wellness programs are not only a way to treat existing issues but also a way to prevent future problems by promoting healthy lifestyles.
These programs offer a broad range of benefits, from improved physical health to enhanced mental well-being. Seniors enrolled in wellness initiatives often experience better control of conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis.
In addition, wellness programs can help reduce hospital visits, lower healthcare costs, and increase overall longevity by encouraging proactive health management. Seniors who engage in regular fitness activities, for instance, are less likely to experience falls, fractures, and other mobility-related issues, which are common concerns in older age.
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Using Medicare can be quite challenging for those without experience dealing with this system and its numerous programs, plans, and services. Hiring a Medicare insurance agent is one of the best ways to guarantee that you get the right Medicare plan suitable for your needs. However, the problem of choosing the right agent might be even more daunting than the task of comprehending the insurance plans. This guide is designed to help you select the best Medicare insurance agent and make the right decision.
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Medicare can often seem like a maze of deadlines and enrollments, especially for retirees. Missing critical Medicare enrollment periods can lead to fines and gaps in coverage. Understanding why these specific time frames exist can save a lot of hassle and ensure continuous healthcare access. The Initial Enrollment Period (IEP) is a seven-month window that allows retirees to enroll in Medicare. Specifically, it starts three months before the month you turn 65, includes your birth month, and ends three months after. Missing this period usually results in penalties that could affect your healthcare costs for the rest of your life. Understanding this window is crucial because it shapes the foundation of your healthcare plan. To make the most of your IEP, it's advisable to start planning as soon as you approach 65. Setting reminders and being proactive can help you take full advantage of this period, avoid future complications, and ensure you receive medical coverage without interruptions or financial strains.
Julia Cave Arbanas[/caption]
Julia Cave Arbanas
Project Manager and
John N. Mafi, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Medicine
General Internal Medicine & Health Services Research
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What is lecanemab used for and how well does it work?
Response: Lecanemab is a treatment for mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia that was approved in January 2023 as part of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) accelerated approval program. The results from a recent phase 3 clinical trial show a modest clinical benefit: the rate of cognitive decline by 27% in an 18-month study involving participants experiencing the early stage of Alzheimer’s, with an 0.45-point absolute difference in cognitive testing scores. However, due to the risk of brain swelling and bleeding (also known as amyloid-related imaging abnormalities), treatment with lecanemab involves frequent MRIs and neurology or geriatrics appointments to monitor for these abnormalities, which can be life threatening. So far, three patient deaths have potentially been tied to lecanemab.
It is likely that the FDA will grant is lecanemab traditional approval later this year, prompting Medicare to reconsider its current coverage restrictions and potentially enabling widespread use.
Dr. Madden[/caption]
Jeanne Madden, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Pharmacy and Health Systems Sciences
School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Bouvé College of Health Science
Northeastern University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Medicare is the US public insurance program mainly serving people 65 years and older, but also some younger adults who have long-term disabling conditions. As such, on average, the Medicare population bears a heavy burden of illness and has high health care needs, compared to the general US population. The under-65 group for the most part has quite low incomes, while the older group represents a wide spectrum, from poor to well-off. Medicare beneficiaries also differ a great deal in terms of whether they have access to supplemental insurance that can help with patient cost-sharing requirements. I’m referring to Medicaid assistance, or a self-purchased Medigap plan, or retiree health benefits, etc. The cost-sharing requirements in traditional Medicare are substantial — e.g., 20% for doctor visits — and there is no annual cap on patient out-of-pocket spending. That’s in contrast to commercial insurance and Medicare Advantage managed care plans — all of those have an annual cap on patient out-of-pocket costs.
There’s a good amount of existing research on whether people in Medicare can afford their drugs, and on the affordability of medical care among younger groups such as working-aged uninsured people and those in ACA exchange plans. But there hasn’t been much research into medical care affordability among older Americans.
Dr. Woolhandler[/caption]
Steffie Woolhandler MD MPH, FACP
Professor of Public health and Health Policy
CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College
Co-founder and board member
Physicians for a National Health Program
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: We analzyed a national database of healthcare utilization. We found racial disparities exist in use of specialist MD services by Black- and Native-Americans relative to White-Americans, despite their greater needs. Hispanic- and Asian-Americans also receive specialist care at low rates. 
Dr. Orenstein[/caption]
Lauren A. V. Orenstein, MD | She/her/hers
Assistant Professor of Dermatology
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Dr. Swerlick[/caption]
Robert A. Swerlick, MD
Professor and Alicia Leizman Stonecipher Chair of Dermatology
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, GA 30322
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Financial incentives have the potential to drive provider behavior, even unintentionally. The aim of this study was to evaluate differences in clinic “productivity” measures that occur in outpatient dermatology encounters. Specifically, we used data from 2016-2020 at one academic dermatology practice to evaluate differences in work relative value units (wRVUs, a measure of clinical productivity) and financial reimbursement by patient race, sex, and age. 66,463 encounters were included in this study, among which 70.1% of encounters were for white patients, 59.6% were for females, and the mean age was 55.9 years old.
These findings suggest that despite having a more similar health care structure to other high spending health care systems, the U.S....
Abby Hoffman[/caption]
Abby Hoffman, BA is a Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Population Health Sciences at Duke University and a PhD Candidate in Health Policy and Management
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Dr. Virginia Wang[/caption]
Virginia Wang, PhD, MSPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences, Associate Director of the Center for Health Innovation and Outcomes Research, and Core Faculty in the
Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University and Investigator at the Durham VA HSR&D Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation (ADAPT).
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: It is well established that healthcare providers are sensitive to changes in price, though their behavioral response varies. Dialysis facilities are particularly responsive to changes in Medicare reimbursement. Many dialysis patients are eligible for Medicare regardless of age, but dialysis facilities generally receive significantly higher reimbursement from private insurers than from Medicare.
In 2011, Medicare implemented a new prospective bundled payment for dialysis that was expected to decrease Medicare payment and reduce overall revenues flowing into facilities. Then the Affordable Care Act (ACA) rules against refusing to insure patients for preexisting conditions and the 2014 ACA Marketplace provided an additional avenue for patients to purchase private insurance. As a result of these policies, dialysis facilities had a strong motivation and opportunity to increase the share of patients with private insurance coverage.
We were interested in understanding whether dialysis facilities were shifting their payer mix away from Medicare, possibly in response to these policy changes. 
Dr. Wadhera[/caption]
Rishi K. Wadhera, MD
Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians
Cardiovasular Diseases
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: In the U.S., income inequality has steadily increased over the last several decades. Given widening inequities, there has been significant concern about the health outcomes of older Americans who experience poverty, particularly because prior studies have shown a strong link between socioeconomic status and health.
In this study, we evaluated how health outcomes for low-income older adults who are dually enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid have changed since the early 2000’s, and whether disparities have narrowed or widened over time compared with more affluent older adults who are solely enrolled in Medicare (non-dually enrolled).
Dr. Wadhera[/caption]
Rishi K. Wadhera, MD
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: In recent years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has implemented nationally mandated value-based programs to incentivize hospitals to deliver higher quality care. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), for example, has financially penalized hospitals over $2.5 billion to date for high 30-day readmission rates.
In addition, the Value-Based Purchasing Program (VBP) rewards or penalizes hospitals based on their performance on multiple domains of care. Both programs have focused on cardiovascular care. The evidence to date, however, suggests that these programs have not improved health outcomes, and there is growing concern that they may disproportionately penalize hospitals that care for sick and poor patients, rather than for poor quality care.
Dr. Marcotte[/caption]
Leah Marcotte, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Medicine
University of Washington
Dr. Liao[/caption]
Joshua M. Liao, MD, MSc, FACP
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine
Director, UW Medicine Value and Systems Science Lab
Medical Director of Payment Strategy, UW Medicine
University of Washington
Dr. Tung[/caption]
Elizabeth Tung MD MS
Section of General Internal Medicine
Instructor of Medicine
University of Chicago
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Medicare provides hospital ratings for all Medicare-certified hospitals in the U.S. based on quality metrics, including mortality, patient experience, hospital readmissions, and others. While ratings are important for comparing hospitals, there's been some concern that some of these quality metrics are outside a hospital's control, especially for hospitals taking care of vulnerable or socially complex patient populations. Take "timeliness of care" as a quality metric, for instance--this measure includes emergency room wait times. But in places that are medically underserved and have very few emergency rooms, these wait times will inevitably be much higher. What this means is that hospitals taking care of medically underserved populations end up getting lower quality ratings, even though they're addressing health disparities by filling an access gap.
Dr. Sumarsono[/caption]
Andrew Sumarsono, MD
UT Southwestern Medical Center
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: There are currently 12 types of medications used to treat type 2 diabetes. With approximately 30 million adults living with diabetes in the United States, the rising cost of insulin has raised concerns about the affordability of diabetes care.
We evaluated trends in total spending and number of prescriptions of all diabetes therapies among Medicare Part D beneficiaries between 2012 and 2017.
Dr. Rahman[/caption]
Md Momotazur Rahman PhD
Associate Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice
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Margot Schwartz[/caption]
Margot Schwartz MPH
Doctoral program
Brown University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Although one third of Medicare beneficiaries are currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage (MA), it is difficult to assess the quality of healthcare providers that serve MA beneficiaries, or to compare them to providers that serve Traditional Medicare (TM) beneficiaries.
While Medicare Advantage plans are required to cover the same minimum healthcare services as TM, MA beneficiaries receive care from their plan’s network of preferred providers, while TM beneficiaries may select any Medicare-certified provider. The objective of this study is to compare the quality of Home health Agencies (HHAs) that serve Medicare Advantage and TM beneficiaries. Approximately 3.5 million Medicare beneficiaries receive home health care annually. 
Dr. Figueroa[/caption]
Jose F. Figueroa, MD, MPH
Instructor , Harvard Medical School,
Department of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Hospitalizations related to ambulatory-care sensitive conditions are widely considered a key measure of access to high-quality ambulatory care. It is included as a quality measure in many national value-based care programs. To date, we do not really know whether rates of these avoidable hospitalizations are meaningfully improving for Medicare beneficiaries over time.
Matthew Trombley, Ph.D.
Associate/Scientist
Abt Associates
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: CMS developed the Accountable Care Organization
(ACO) Investment Model (AIM) as part of the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) to encourage the growth of ACOs in rural and underserved areas. The goal of our study was to see if AIM ACOs could successfully decrease Medicare spending in these areas.
Dr. Siddiq[/caption]
Auyon Siddiq PhD
Assistant Professor/INFORMS Member
Decisions, Operations & Technology Management
UCLA Anderson School of Management
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: The Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) was created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to control escalating Medicare spending by incentivizing providers to deliver healthcare more efficiently. Medicare providers that enroll in the MSSP earn bonus payments for reducing spending to below a risk-adjusted financial benchmark that depends on the provider's historical spending. To generate savings, a provider must invest to improve efficiency, which is a cost that is absorbed entirely by the provider under the current contract.
This has proven to be challenging for the MSSP, with a majority of participating providers unable to generate savings due to the associated costs. This study presents a predictive analytics approach to redesigning the MSSP contract, with the goal of better aligning incentives and improving financial outcomes from the MSSP. We build our model from data containing the financial performance of providers enrolled in the MSSP, which together accounted for 7 million beneficiaries and over $70 billion in Medicare spending.
Dr. Hemmila[/caption]
Dr. Mark R. Hemmila MD
Associate Professor of Surgery
Division of Acute Care Surgery
University of Michigan
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Traumatic injury has a tendency to be thought of as a disease that preferentially impacts younger people. We wanted to explore the prevalence and impact of traumatic injury within the population of patients for whom Medicare is the third party payer. 
Dr. Joynt Maddox[/caption]
Karen Joynt Maddox, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Washington University Brown School of Social Work
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has been controversial, in part because until 2019 it did not take social risk into account when judging hospitals’ performance. In the 21st Century Cures Act, Congress required that CMS change the program to judge hospitals only against other hospitals in their “peer group” based on the proportion of their patients who are poor. As a result, starting with fiscal year 2019, the HRRP divides hospitals into five peer groups and then assesses performance and assigns penalties. 
Dr. Nuckols[/caption]
Teryl K. Nuckols, MD
Vice Chair, Clinical Research
Director, Division of General Internal Medicine
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Healthcare policymakers have long worried that value-based payment programs unfairly penalize hospitals treating many African-American patients, which could worsen health outcomes for this group.
For example, policy experts have suspected that the Medicare Hospital Readmission Reduction Program unevenly punishes institutions caring for more vulnerable populations, including racial minorities. They've also feared that hospitals might be incentivized to not give patients the care they need to avoid readmissions.
The study Investigators wanted to determine whether death rates following discharges increased among African-American and white patients 65 years and older after the Medicare Hospital Readmission Reduction Program started.
Dr. Hart[/caption]
Allyson Hart MD MS
Department of Medicine, Hennepin Healthcare,
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Kidney transplantation confers profound survival, quality of life, and cost benefits over dialysis for the treatment of end-stage kidney disease. Kidney transplant recipients under 65 years of age qualify for Medicare coverage following transplantation, but coverage ends after three years for patients who are not disabled.
We studied 78,861 Medicare-covered kidney transplant recipients under the age of 65, and found that failure of the transplanted kidney was 990 percent to 1630 percent higher for recipients who lost Medicare coverage before this three-year time point compared with recipients who lost Medicare on time. Those who lost coverage after 3 years had a lesser, but still very marked, increased risk of kidney failure. Recipients who lost coverage before or after the three-year time point also filled immunosuppressive medications at a significantly lower rate than those who lost coverage on time.
Dr. Nuckols[/caption]
Teryl K. Nuckols, MD
Vice Chair, Clinical Research
Director, Division of General Internal Medicine
Cedars Sinai
Los Angeles, California
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: The Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) penalizes hospitals with increased 30-day readmission rates among seniors admitted with heart failure (HF). Heart failure readmission rates declined markedly following the implementation of this policy. Two facts have raised concerns about whether the HRRP might have also inadvertently increased 30-day heart failure mortality rates.
First, before the policy was implemented, hospitals with higher heart failure readmission rates had lower 30-day HF mortality rates, suggesting that readmissions are often necessary and beneficial in this population. Second, 30-day HF mortality rose nationally after the HRRP was implemented, and the timing of the increase has suggested a possible link to the policy.
Are hospitals turning patients away, putting them at risk of death, or is the increase in heart failure mortality just a coincidence? To answer this question, we compared trends in 30-day HF mortality rates between penalized hospitals and non-penalized hospitals because 30-day HF readmissions declined much more at hospitals subject to penalties under this policy.