While many may be marching off to a local Memorial Day parade, a record number of seniors are jumping on the preventative care band wagon. CMS announced today that 12.1 million Medicare beneficiaries used free preventative care in the first quarter of 2012.
Over 26 million people in traditional Medicare received free preventative services in all of 2011, so today’s announcement reveals seniors are on track to surpass even last year’s numbers. Prior to 2011, beneficiaries were subject to co-pays and deductibles for many of these services including things like cancer screening and smoking cessation counseling. Cost is now less of an obstacle for seniors who are interested in finding and treating illness early.
One of the mandates of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) was to eliminate many cost sharing barriers for beneficiaries to obtaining preventative care. As a result, a new expanded list of screenings and services designed to help identify and detect early disease, was made available to Medicare recipients cost free.
CMS announced that, from January through April of this year, 12.1 million Medicare beneficiaries have already received at least one of these preventative services – including over 856,000 who have taken advantage of the Annual Wellness Visit that is now provided at no cost.
Do you know what screenings are offered? Learn more about Medicare Preventative Services and Procedures.
Have you received any preventative services in 2012? Share with us.
