Issue #1 · May 5, 2026
New Medicare Advantage rules, rising uninsured rates, and what it means for your family.
Welcome to the very first issue of The Best Hospice and Home Health Brief. We're glad you're here, and we promise to keep things useful.
The biggest story for families right now involves changes to Medicare Advantage. CMS recently finalized its rules for the 2027 plan year, and the picture is mixed. Some new consumer protections are genuinely helpful, but other safeguards that were put in place to protect people enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans have been rolled back. These regulatory changes tend to get buried under louder debates about payment rates and insurer profits, but they matter enormously to the millions of seniors who rely on Medicare Advantage for their health coverage, including home health and hospice benefits. We'll get into the specifics below.
Meanwhile, new data on health coverage by race and ethnicity shows that the national uninsured rate ticked up in 2024 for the first time since 2019. The main driver was the end of pandemic era continuous enrollment in Medicaid, which had kept millions of people covered even when their circumstances changed. Hispanic, Black, and White Americans under 65 all saw significant increases in coverage losses. For families caring for aging parents, a gap in coverage for any family member can ripple outward fast, making it harder for adult children to take time off, afford caregiving supplies, or manage their own health while supporting someone else.
If your loved one is enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, now is a good time to pull out the plan documents and look closely at what's covered for home health and hospice. The new CMS rule for 2027 includes some consumer friendly updates, but it also loosens certain requirements that plans previously had to meet. That means the protections your family counted on last year may not work the same way next year. Plans can change their networks, prior authorization processes, and appeals procedures from one year to the next, and those changes are not always communicated clearly.
Here is something specific to watch: when someone on Medicare Advantage elects hospice, their hospice benefit actually switches back to Original Medicare. That transition catches a lot of families off guard. Your loved one's Medicare Advantage plan will still cover non hospice related care, but the hospice services themselves are billed through Original Medicare. If you don't understand that split, you can end up confused about who is covering what, and confusion often leads to bills that didn't need to happen. If any of this feels overwhelming, that's what we're here for.
Let's talk about what hospice actually costs families under Medicare, because there is a persistent myth that it's completely free. Under Original Medicare's hospice benefit, most services are indeed covered at 100 percent. That includes nursing care, medications related to the terminal diagnosis, medical equipment like a hospital bed or oxygen, aide visits, social work support, and bereavement counseling for the family. But there are a few gaps. Medicare requires a copay of no more than $5 for each prescription for outpatient drugs related to pain management and symptom control. There's also a 5 percent coinsurance for inpatient respite care, which is short term care in a facility so that the primary caregiver can rest. If the inpatient respite rate is roughly $500 per day, that 5 percent means about $25 a day out of pocket.
Those costs are small compared to what families face without hospice, but they add up and they surprise people. The bigger financial risk comes from services that fall outside the hospice benefit, like treatments for conditions unrelated to the terminal diagnosis. If your mother is on hospice for heart failure but breaks her hip, the hip treatment goes through her regular Medicare coverage, not hospice. Keeping track of what falls inside and outside the hospice benefit is one of the most common challenges families face, and a good hospice provider will help you sort it out from day one.
We started Best Hospice and Home Health because finding good care for someone you love should not feel like a second job. Our service is completely free for families. We connect you with verified hospice and home health providers in your area, and we help you understand your options so you can make decisions with confidence instead of panic. If this newsletter was helpful, please forward it to someone who might need it. You'd be surprised how many people are quietly trying to figure all of this out alone.