October 16, 2012 
Medicare offers people free preventative care which includes a variety of things:
- Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening
- Alcohol misuse screenings and counseling
- Bone mass measurements (bone density)
- Cardiovascular disease screenings
- Cardiovascular disease (behavioral therapy)
- Colorectal cancer screenings
- Depression screenings
- Diabetes screenings
- Diabetes self-management training
- Glaucoma tests
- HIV screenings
- Mammograms (screening)
- Nutrition therapy services
- Obesity screenings and counseling
- One-time “Welcome to Medicare” preventive visit
- Pap tests and pelvic exams (screening)
- Prostate cancer screenings
- Sexually transmitted infections screening and counseling
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Shots:
- Tobacco use cessation counseling
- Yearly “Wellness” visit
(This list is from http://www.medicare.gov/coverage/preventive-and-screening-services.html.)
Now, while HHS says that over 32M people used these services in 2011, this is only 66% of Medicare beneficiaries. This varies by state with 48.1% of people in Wyoming taking advantage of this benefit while 71.1% of people in Delaware take advantage of the benefit.
I’m not sure of the root cause, but I suspect a lot of it has to do with education. Beneficiaries don’t understand what’s free. They don’t understand how to take advantage of the benefit, and physicians aren’t reinforcing this.
Enabling Healthy Decisions 
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