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You are still working,.Even if you stay in the hospital overnight, Medicare still considers observation services as outpatient care and requires you to pay a bigger share of the costs. Your inpatient status is also important to determining whether Medicare will cover care you receive if you are later released to a skilled nursing the facility..President Obama and House leadership are discussing support of a more "limited approach" to immigration reform. Under discussion is a plan to grant illegal immigrants limited legal status by providing the right to work in the U.S., but not citizenship..Second, one new cosponsor Representative Sean Patrick Maloney signed on to the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act, bringing the total up to twenty. This bill, if adopted, would reduce prescription drug prices for older Americans by requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower covered Medicare Part D drug prices on behalf of beneficiaries..As you might imagine, the Congressional schedule has been totally rearranged. They had scheduled recesses for the national party conventions, their usual August recess, and then for the elections. We assume those are all up-in-the-air now..If signed into law, H.R. 4012 would provide Social Security beneficiaries and retired military members with a 3.9 percent COLA in 2016, which would amount to around 1 for the average beneficiary. It would offset the cost of the emergency COLA and extend the life of the Social Security Trust Funds by closing tax loopholes for corporate executives..Until then, many Members of Congress will be holding town hall meetings to address the questions and concerns of their constituents. TSCL encourages its members and supporters to attend these town halls and to ask questions of their elected officials about important Social Security and Medicare issues, like the following four….Currently, the two vaccines available are produced by Moderna and Pfizer. However, a vaccine from Johnson and Johnson could become available within the next few days. And there could be one or two more available in a few more weeks..The difference in drug prices between the lowest and highest costing plans, can be in the hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars. For brand name and specialty drugs, the most frequent reason that the drug costs so much more in the highest costing plan is lack of coverage. The drug is not listed on the high cost plan's formulary. For example, the lowest cost plan for Sovaldi, a drug used to treat Hepatitis C, charges ,600 in co-insurance. The highest cost drug plan charges 0,800, the full cost of the drug, because Sovaldi is not on the plan's formulary.