As discussed my previous blog post in July, both Social Security and Medicare are facing serious financial troubles in the near future as a result of Baby Boomers aging into the programs and rising healthcare costs. Medicare has specifically had a bleak outlook for the next few decades as reports in recent years indicated...
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After weeks of negotiations, last Thursday the Senate granted $26 billion in aid money to states and school districts to halt layoffs of thousands of government employees, teachers, and emergency and law enforcement workers. A large chunk of these much-needed funds will go toward Medicaid programs in states whose administrators have been struggling to...
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As the health care debate raged onwards in 2009, the number of uninsured American adults rose by 3 million from 2008. Overall, approximately 46.3 million people in this country do not have health insurance covered. In Texas, over one out of every four people was uninsured in 2009, compared to the 15.4 percent...
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According to Mike Lillis from THE HILL’S Healthwatch blog, a recent study by the National Council on Aging (NCOA) discovered that few seniors knew about and understood the ins and outs of health care reform. The NCOA distributed a 12 question survey to 636 seniors. No senior got all the survey questions right,...
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A coalition of House Democrats is gearing up to propose legislation which revives the public option President Obama had originally hoped to carry through this year’s healthcare overhaul. The legislation House Democrats plan to introduce today would establish a government-administered insurance option available to consumers as part of The Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges....
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On May 13, 2009 the trustees of Medicare and Social Security released a report detailing the impending insolvency of our nation’s two biggest entitlement programs: Medicare in 2017 and Social Security in 2037. Projections have pushed these bankruptcy dates up from the previous report’s estimates of 2019 for Medicare and 2041 for Social Security....
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By 2014, each and every American will have an electronic medical record of their own. Electronic medical records (EMR) are “paperless paperwork,” or computerized copies of patient records, and the federal government hopes to make wide use of them to cut down health costs. The Obama administration’s health information technology program plans on...
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Although the Advantage ratings purportedly help seniors weed out the best possible plans, the ratings system is flawed and most seniors rely on a combination of plan costs and benefits to determine which plan they want. The impending Medicare reforms will be rewarding top-ranked Advantage plans with bonuses, despite the obvious flaws within the...
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The doughnut hole coverage gap forces seniors to pay out of pocket once their drug costs hit a certain amount. Recent health care reforms have focused on the doughnut hall as a way to cut costs. Here are the top 6 things to know about the doughnut hole for seniors, their relatives, and their...
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In light of the recent letters sent out to their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, insurance company Humana now faces the possibility of heavy fines and may even be kicked out of the Medicare Advantage market by federal healthcare agency, CMS. This seems like a pretty harsh penalty for a one page letter informing seniors that...
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