News

Help! I've Been Told I Have To Return My Deceased Husband's Last Social Security Check. Is This Really True?.Because Medicare Part B premiums are automatically deducted from Social Security benefits, retirees find it difficult to fully anticipate the squeeze that rising Medicare Part B can put on benefits and their budgets. In the past 15 years the percentage of the Social Security COLA increase has been lower than Medicare Part B premium increase 9 times..Coming to Congress, just one year ago, I pledged to make rural healthcare a top priority. One of the first things I did was to join the Rural Health Care Coalition, a bi-partisan coalition committed to advancing rural priorities in health care policy in Congress. The first action we took this Congress was to introduce the Health Care Access and Rural Equity Act of 200The H-CARE Act is a comprehensive piece of legislation that makes important improvements to help rural healthcare providers address the challenges associated with delivering quality healthcare close to home..Why did Dad get a bill for ,944 after his recent hospitalization due to COVID-19? I thought emergency legislation required coronavirus care to be covered by Medicare. Dad is enrolled in a large Medicare Advantage plan..During the nation's recovery from the 2007- 2009 Great Recession, and Troubled Asset Relief Program bailouts, Social Security and Medicare became frequent targets of deficit cut negotiations. Deficit plans included proposals to reduce annual cost-of-living adjustments by tying it to the more slowly growing chained consumer price index. The Budget Control Act of 2011 led to automatic 2% annual Medicare cuts on payments to providers. "That cut affected all Medicare providers, including hospitals, doctors, nursing staff," Johnson observes. "These are very same providers that are now so dangerously strained by the coronavirus pandemic.".There are 1,313,935 active members/supporters..Forty-one million Americans participate in Part D. Medicare should be able to negotiate drug prices on their behalf just as the VA and private insurers do. Doing so would have the potential to lower drug costs for Part D participants and save Medicare money. For these reasons, I've introduced multiple bills to end Medicare's ban on price negotiation, and have urged President Trump not to renege on his campaign pledges supporting this..Representative John Larson introduced H.R. 860 on January 30, 201It has since been referred to the Committee on Ways and Means..While economists are still sorting out the reason for the fall in inflation, I recently asked what you have observed in the way of prices. Are the goods and services on which you typically spend most of your budget really falling - or are those prices actually going up?