News

In fact, unlike the surtax on high earners, this 3.8% net investment tax was not even a specific provision of Affordable Care Act. It was a provision of a separate bill, the Health Care Education and Reconciliation Act of 2010 which was passed about two days after the Affordable Care Act. By setting up the revenues so that they would flow to the General Fund, Congress by-passed earmarking those revenues for the Medicare Part A or Part B Trust Fund. That also means that, when those revenues are used for other purposes, the Medicare Trust Funds are not earning any interest from the federal government for the use of those funds..Proponents don't call it a cut. They say it's an "improvement" - and "a technical correction." They say that the change is needed because the CPI is inaccurate and doesn't reflect the effect on inflation when consumers substitute goods when prices change. Unlike our current method of measuring cost increases, chaining doesn't measure the actual change in the cost of goods from one month to the next. Instead, it attempts to measure how much people spend when prices go up..The proposal to adopt the chained CPI for adjusting Social Security and other federal retirement benefits has been a central feature of nearly every major budget negotiation since 20The adoption of the chained CPI to calculate COLAs would not only permanently reduce Social Security benefits of more than 60 million beneficiaries, but would also increase taxes, because personal exemptions and tax brackets which are adjusted for inflation would rise more slowly..Some states have passed laws that would allow their state to import drugs from Canada. National Public Radio recently reported that the state of Florida wants to establish a pilot program to buy medications from Canada in bulk. The state would contract with a wholesaler in Canada, who would provide certain high cost drugs that the state identifies. Patients in Florida who have a prescription for one of those drugs would just go to their pharmacy to pick up their medication.."The spending follows a long tradition of generous political giving. Major manufacturers typically make hundreds of modest donations to incumbent members of Congress but avoid donating to presidential candidates, seeing little utility in placing presidential bets..Retired seniors have been far more accepting of vaccines than their working-age counterparts. Their full vaccination rate is about 82%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because they're susceptible to severe illness, even relatively few unvaccinated seniors mean more deaths -- and more crowded hospitals -- than would occur in a larger pool of younger adults..Sole source drugs. The companies with monopoly pricing power acquire sole - source drugs for which there is only one manufacturer, and therefore face no immediate competition..The Ryan Budget would not only force seniors to pay more for their healthcare but it would reopen the Medicare prescription drug 'donut hole,' forcing many seniors to pay more for their life-saving prescription medications..Even when you spend ,000 out-of-pocket, there are still out-of-pocket costs. At the catastrophic level of coverage there are smaller co-pays or 5% coinsurance, which can further lead to substantial out-of-pocket spending. In 2015, for example, Part D enrollees with out-of-pocket costs above the catastrophic threshold comprised just 2 percent of all enrollees, but their spending totaled 20 percent of enrollees' total out-of-pocket spending for the year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.