Health Medicaid And ChipThe House-Senate Conference Committee met multiple times this week for public negotiations, but little progress seems to have been made. The group of twenty must come to an agreement before the end of the month in order to: continue unemployment payments, block a Medicare doctor payment cut, and extend the Social Security payroll tax cut..The federal government negotiates prescription drug prices for Medicaid enrollees and for veterans, but it is not allowed to negotiate lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries. Do you support this policy?."It's highly disturbing that such a large number of survey participants have been forced to access food pantries," Johnson says. "This illustrates the dire situation faced by households of those who depend on Social Security for most of their income when food prices jump into overdrive," she says. "Over the past 12 months, the price of bacon is up 11 percent, beef up 10.6 percent and fresh fish up 8.5 percent" Johnson notes. … Continued
Johnson And Johnson Vaccine Ready For Fda ApprovalThe new drug's availability expands the choices that patients and physicians have for treating the chronic, metabolic illness diabetes. The new product potentially reduces the cost of treatment for patients as they navigate different options..President Barak Obama included a proposal in his fiscal year 2014 budget that would have reduced Social Security benefits by using the more slowly-growing chained consumer price index to calculate the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment. An estimate produced for TSCL projects that "chaining the COLA" would cut Social Security benefits by about 9% over a 30-year retirement. Although the proposal has been under discussion for several years, it has not passed, primarily due to fierce resistance from older voters..When a pharmaceutical industry leader attempted to avoid questions about the pharmaceutical company representative buying alcohol for doctors, McCaskill pressed them for a yes-or-no answer. Ultimately, she admitted there were no rules to prohibit this from taking place, and defended the industry as simply trying to communicate information about prescription medications. … Continued