State Category Womens HealthTSCL is monitoring the negotiations closely since a shutdown could negatively impact the timely delivery of Social Security checks and Medicare reimbursements. In the days and weeks ahead, we will advocate for proposals that would keep the federal government including the Social Security Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services fully and responsibly funded. For progress updates, visit the Legislative News section of our website or follow TSCL on Facebook or Twitter..Under growing pressure to reduce the federal deficit, the prospect of major Social Security and Medicare cuts is the greatest it's been in almost three decades. The recent debt limit deal calls for a bipartisan committee that has until Thanksgiving to come up with a plan to cut the deficit by .2 trillion. TSCL believes that the committee would very likely include a change to a more slowly growing consumer price index that would cut annual-cost-of-living adjustments. There are also proposals that would require seniors to pay a bigger portion of their Medicare costs..The plan released this week is not expected to be adopted or even to win any bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. However, it does mark the start of the fiscal 2016 budget negotiations, and it lays out the line-by-line needs of the federal agencies for appropriators. Soon, the House and Senate Budget Committees will release their own spending blueprints for fiscal 2016, and TSCL expects to see proposals that would dramatically alter the Social Security and Medicare programs. We will keep a close eye on the negotiations as they evolve, and will post updates here in the Legislative News section of our website. … Continued
Prevent Quit Smoking Every Minute Counts"But the evidence on whether Biogen's treatment, called aducanumab, is effective is, at best, mixed; the FDA approved it this week over the objections of its own advisory committee. And with a preliminary announced price of nearly ,000 annually per patient, covering the treatment could cost upward of 0 billion a year, mostly to Medicare, which would almost double the program's drug spending. Patients themselves could be on the hook for thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.".Medicare "Premium Support" Gains Momentum.Half of the medications that saw price hikes followed price increases in 2019 and 2020, according to the report. … Continued
