Medicare experts often advise enrollees to re-shop their plan coverage during the annual fall open enrollment period. This is the time when you can make unlimited changes to your prescription drug or Medicare Advantage coverage, and shopping the market can help you save money and make sure you get a best-fit plan.
The shopping trip often begins with the Medicare Plan Finder - the official government site that posts plan offerings (bit.ly/2IDFHEJ). The plan finder allows you to plug in your Medicare number and list of medications, and then displays local options that fit your needs, and premiums you will pay.
via Reuters.
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House GOP Votes to Gut Medicaid, Weaken Medicare & Put Seniors’ healthcare at Risk
The National Committee strongly condemns the American Health Care Act (AHCA) just passed by the House, which needlessly puts the healthcare of millions of older Americans in jeopardy. “Despite the bill’s name, risking the health of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens to give the wealthy an $880 billion tax cut is tremendously uncaring — and does not reflect real American values…”
More on this issue via Entitled to Know.
House GOP Votes to Gut Medicaid, Weaken Medicare & Put Seniors’ healthcare at Risk
The National Committee strongly condemns the American Health Care Act (AHCA) just passed by the House, which needlessly puts the healthcare of millions of older Americans in jeopardy. “Despite the bill’s name, risking the health of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens to give the wealthy an $880 billion tax cut is tremendously uncaring — and does not reflect real American values,” says Max Richtman.
The bill cuts nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid by converting it into a block grant program or imposing per capita caps, which will make it harder for impoverished seniors to access long term skilled nursing care and community or home care. Overall, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 14 million people will be kicked off the Medicaid rolls in the next 10 years if this bill becomes law.
More on the Obamacare Repeal here.
May is Older Americans Month, but the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans are putting a serious damper on the celebration. Yes, candidate Trump promised not to touch Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
But his administration has been actively undermining those pledges. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney — who once called Social Security a Ponzi scheme — questioned the legitimacy of Social Security Disability Insurance — and wouldn’t promise a Presidential veto of legislation to privatize Medicare (a pet project of House Speaker Paul Ryan).
President Trump champions the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which guts
Medicaid, undermines the solvency of Medicare, and allows insurers to
charge older Americans up to five times as much as people in their 20s.
More on this issue here via The Hill.
Meanwhile, a President who was willing to strip more than 20 million Americans of their health coverage in the blink of an eye has the gumption to paint Democrats as “extremists” on health care. If Medicare is under threat from anyone, it’s Trump and his allies in Congress.
When it comes to healthcare – and especially seniors’ health care – Trump chooses to dwell in an Orwellian ‘opposite world’ where Republican attempts to cut and privatize Medicare are actually meant to “protect” the program. Apparently, President Trump and his GOP allies believe they must destroy Medicare in order to save it.
You can read more from this blog post by clicking here.
- We are opposed to the House-passed American Health Care Act because of its adverse impact on older Americans and the Medicare and Medicaid programs and would like to see many of its proposals dropped or greatly improved in the Senate. In particular, we oppose:
- Reducing the Medicare Part A Hospital Insurance trust fund’s solvency by repealing the ACA’s 0.9 percent Hospital Insurance trust fund payroll tax on wages above $200,000 per individual or $250,000 per couple. Accelerating the exhaustion of the Part A trust fund would likely lead to cuts in Medicare, including privatizing the program, that would be detrimental to current and future beneficiaries.
- Driving up seniors’ out-of-pocket costs by repealing the ACA’s subsidies, based on income and the cost of health insurance, that help defray the cost of premiums. The AHCA would provide refundable tax credits ranging from $2,000 to $4,000, based solely on age. For many people age 60 and older, a $4,000 tax credit would fail to make comprehensive coverage affordable.
For the full letter please click here.
On Tuesday, April 19, 2016 the Older Americans Act (OAA) was reauthorized for three years – an important bipartisan accomplishment. Enacted in July 1965 along with Medicare and Medicaid, the law is a key piece of policy that empowers the Administration for Community Living (ACL) to fund programs across the country that are dedicated to helping seniors stay in their communities.
via Altarum.
Related Reading:
President Trump champions the GOP’s American Health Care Act, which guts Medicaid, undermines the solvency of Medicare, and allows insurers to charge older Americans up to five times as much as people in their 20s.
Max Richtman via The Hill.
We already know the AHCA would take health care away for 24 million people. But guess what? There’s so much more.
via CBPP.
Related Reading:
- The GOP’s “Really, Really Good” Healthcare Reset is Really, Really Worse.
- The Republican healthcare bill
would have gutted Medicaid, weakened Medicare, and allowed insurers to
charge older Americans up to five times as much as young adults, among
other travesties.
People over 65 who live alone were more likely to describe their health as excellent or very good than were seniors who live with others, according to a study exploring connections between older Americans’ health status and their living arrangements.
via Kaiser Health News.
Related Reading:
- The Case for Expanding Medicare: Hearing Loss – The Economic, Social and Medical Factors Impacting Healthy Aging.
- To remain cognitively and socially engaged with families, friends, and other individuals, seniors with a hearing impairment must have access to effective treatments to help reduce the incidence of social isolation, an important driver of morbidity and mortality in older adults.
- Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between hearing loss and social isolation.
Older Americans are especially vulnerable to scams and identity theft, and Medicare is doing something about it. U.S. seniors will start receiving new identification cards next year as part of an effort to protect them from the rising risk of fraud.
But that is the only good news surrounding a sweeping federal initiative to bolster fraud defenses by reducing the widespread use of Social Security numbers as identifiers throughout the government.
Medicare cards use an identifier called the Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) - but right now it is the same as your Social Security number. Starting in April 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be mailing new cards to enrollees that use a unique, randomly assigned number.
More on this issue can be found via Reuters.