Rutgers Campus Remembers Bullied Student

Modest premium increase for Medicare drug plans
WASHINGTON — Seniors will see a modest increase in their Medicare prescription Premiums next year but benefits will also improve, federal Health officials said Wednesday. The average monthly premium charged by Medicare drug plans for standard coverage will rise to an estimated $30 in 2011, an increase of $1 over 2010, or about 3 percent, said Medicare administrator Don Berwick. But since Medicare drug plans vary widely in coverage and costs, consumer advocates cautioned that seniors need...

Modest premium increase for Medicare drug plans (AP)
WASHINGTON – Seniors will see a modest increase in their Medicare prescription Premiums next year but benefits will also improve, federal Health officials said Wednesday. The average monthly premium charged by Medicare drug plans for standard coverage will rise to an estimated $30 in 2011, an increase of $1 over 2010, or about 3 percent, said Medicare administrator Don Berwick. But since Medicare drug plans vary widely in coverage and costs, consumer advocates cautioned that seniors need...

Seniors face modest Medicare hike, better benefits
Washington — Seniors will see a modest increase in their Medicare prescription Premiums next year, but benefits will also improve, federal Health officials said yesterday. The average monthly premium charged by Medicare drug plans for standard coverage will rise to an estimated $30 in 2011, an increase of $1 over 2010, or about 3 percent, said Donald Berwick, Medicare administrator. Since Medicare drug plans vary widely in coverage and costs, consumer advocates cautioned that seniors...

Small Increase for Medicare Drug Plans
The average monthly premium charged by Medicare drug plans for standard coverage will rise to an estimated $30 in 2011, an increase of $1 over 2010, or about 3 percent, said Medicare administrator Don Berwick. But since Medicare drug plans vary widely in coverage and costs, consumer advocates cautioned that seniors need to check their particular plan to avoid unpleasant surprises that may not be revealed in a such a broad estimate of average Premiums. Nonetheless, seniors with high drug costs...

Modest premium increase for Medicare drug plans
Related Articles Washington (AP) The government says seniors will pay a little more for Medicare prescription coverage next year but benefits will also improve. The average monthly premium charged by prescription plans will rise to $30 in 2011, an increase of $1, or about 3 percent, federal Health officials said Wednesday. About 27 million Medicare beneficiares are signed up for the prescription benefit, delivered by private insurers. Seniors with high drug costs can expect a noticeable...

Seniors Already Seeing Lower Prescription Drug Costs
Posted by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on August 18, 2010 at 04:49 PM EDT The Affordable Care Act is working to help bring down the cost of Prescription Drugs for seniors enrolled in the Medicare Part D Prescription drug program and today, we got more good news for our seniors. This afternoon, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that Medicare Prescription drug plan Premiums for 2011 will stay similar to rates beneficiaries are currently paying this year. The...

'Doughnut hole' Medicare drug rebates start going to seniors soon
Advertisement Seniors now enrolled in a Medicare Part D plan pay 25% of the cost of their Prescription Drugs until the total bill reaches $2,830. At that point, enrollees must pay the full cost of their Prescriptions until their total out-of-pocket spending reaches $4,550. Catastrophic coverage then kicks in and enrollees pay 5% of drug costs for the rest of the year. Department of Health and Human Services officials said Thursday that the first 80,000 seniors who hit that coverage gap, or...

Modest premium increase for Medicare drug plans
Washington (AP) - The government says seniors will pay a little more for Medicare prescription coverage next year—but benefits will also improve. The average monthly premium charged by prescription plans will rise to $30 in 2011, an increase of $1, or about 3 percent, federal health officials said Wednesday. About 27 million Medicare beneficiares are signed up for the prescription benefit, delivered by private insurers. Seniors with high drug costs can expect a noticeable improvement next...

FLASHBACK: McConnell Predicted Health Law Would Increase Prescription Drug Costs
FLASHBACK: McConnell Predicted Health Law Would Increase Prescription Drug Costs When HHS sent out the first round of rebate checks to seniors who fall into the so-called doughnut hole of Medicare Part D, Republicans accused the administration of “ hiding the whole truth ” and argued that Prescription drug costs would still increase for seniors. What the administration, however, will not mention at today’s event is that for every senior who gets a check, more than...

Medicare Drug Plans Rise $1 a Month
The average Medicare drug benefit plan will cost $30 a month next year, a $1-a-month increase from this years average premium, federal officials said Wednesday afternoon. The officials portrayed the estimated new cost as a very small price increase, while saying many older Americans will pay less out-of-pocket for brand-name Pharmaceutical Drugs under the Health Care law enacted in Washington in March. Dr. Donald M. Berwick , administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid...

Saul Friedman: Getting Personal: Without Medicare I'd Be Broke or Dead
It's not too late to observe and celebrate the 45th anniversary of Medicare, for it's a good occasion to wonder, in this time of economic distress, what life would have been like without it for the 45 million of us who are eligible because we are disabled or over 65. One reason I ask is I suspect those Deficit crazies have not thought about the consequences for Medicare if, as Republicans suggest, the Social Security Retirement Age is raised from 66 to 70 on the grounds that we're all living...

"For Cost Control, Vouchers and Medicare Don't Mix"
Are vouchers the key to controlling Medicare Costs? Apparently not: For Cost Control, Vouchers and Medicare Don't Mix, by Austin Frakt : With the ambition of reducing the federal Debt, Congressman Paul Ryan has offered a proposal to convert Medicare to a voucher-based program. ... In principle, such a system could reduce federal Medicare Costs... The history of Medicare and its politics suggest it is unlikely to work out that way. About Ryan's plan, Economist Paul Krugman wrote...

Faced with rising health costs, large employers plan to shift burden to workers
Faced with skyrocketing Healthcare Costs and new Insurance rules under Healthcare Reform, more of the nation's biggest businesses are planning to hike Premiums and Cost-sharing measures on their employees next year, according to a survey of those companies released Wednesday. Seventy percent of large employers said they will eliminate lifetime dollar caps on overall benefits, according to the latest annual survey conducted by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH), while 63 percent plan to...

The Decline of Private Health Insurance
I’m not very interested in the underlying dispute between Scott Winship and Mike Konczal, but I did think this Winship chart about Health Insurance was interesting: I emailed Winship to ask him what this data looks like if we examine the under-65 crowd. To the eyeball, at least, the big story on this chart seems to be the creation of Medicare and then the aging of the population pushing a larger share of people into Medicare-eligibility. The answer turns out to be a bit interesting....

ObamaCare And The Deficit, Then And Now
Here's where we are as regards ObamaCare and reducing the Deficit, now . Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend Health Care Legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the Deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it." And then: The Hill - June 2010 : White House defends Healthcare law as reducing Budget Deficit Newsweak - March 2010 : They've built a bill that Washington's toughest scorekeeper says will cut...

A New Strategy for Selling Health Care
By now, most of us can agree that Democrats have largely failed to use Health Care Reform as a political boost. The new law remains unpopular with half or more of the U.S. population and it will be one of several critical issues in the upcoming mid-term Elections, particularly in districts where freshman, Blue Dog or vulnerable Democrats voted in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The law did pass, by the way. Apparently, a lot of voters don't know this. Ben Smith of...

Overhaul fails to boost 'health care confidence'
Washington — President Barack Obama's Health overhaul hasn't helped Americans feel any more secure about their own medical Care, according to a survey to be released Thursday by leading private researchers. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said Consumer Confidence spiked in April after Obama signed landmark Legislation to expand coverage and start trying to control costs. But Confidence levels have since fallen back to what they were last year at the beginning of an epic congressional...

Sharron Angle Cites Chile's Dictatorship On Privatizing Social Security
Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle says the nation's Social Security system needs to be privatized, and she says it was done before in Chile. CBS affiliate 8 News Now reports on what the Tea Party-backed hopeful had to say on the matter in an interview on Thursday: ...Angle's new ads say she's out to save Social Security by protecting it from government Raids. But in the primary, she said that Medicare and Social Security needed to be phased out in favor of something privatized,...

DOE: Rich Parents Want Us To Pay For Kids' Private School
Because of a few U.S. Supreme Court decisions, parents of Special-needs Children can ask that the DOE pay for Private School if Public School options aren't adequate. Last year, the city's department spent $116 million reimbursing parents, mainly in the wealthier areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn. However, many parents never tried sending their kids to Public School before squeezing the DOE for their pennies. Michael Best, general counsel at the DOE, told the Wall Street Journal , "No one...

Deficit Nonsense in the WSJ
the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. In it, 74% said it would be acceptable to change Medicare to provide larger Subsidies for Low-income seniors, while cutting Subsidies for the more affluent. Sixty-four percent would accept capping Medicare and Medicaid payments to Health-care providers, Now one might interpret the cutting Subsidies for the more affluent as meaning “more affluent than me” but capping payments to providers is exactly how the ACA restrains the growth of...

Fed Health Site Opens Pools to the Uninsured, for Now
The government website for the new Health-care law, HealthCare.gov , is now up. Overall it is a slick and user-friendly site. Clearly, a lot of work went into the web design. It’s just another sign of how the Obama Administration is determined to sell the new law, although it won’t serve many people at this point. The important thing is that the site contains a link to the application process for the new “Pre-existing Conditions Insurance plan.” This is the so-called...

Big Employers Estimate Health-Care Costs Will Rise 8.9% in 2011
By Katherine Hobson A survey of big employers finds they expect their Health-care Costs to rise nearly 9% next year and plan to share some of that burden with employees via higher Premiums and higher out-of-pocket limits. The survey included responses from 72 members of the nonprofit National Business Group on Health , which represents large companies such as General Electric, Microsoft and General Motors. It parallels pretty closely another survey on employer Health-care Costs, by...

Democrats Fall Back on the Same Tired Lies From 1994
The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning , “Congress’s hot August recess has begun with Rhetoric to match, with Democrats pummeling Republicans for wanting to trim Social Security, and Republicans hammering Democrats for favoring Tax Increases.” Likewise, CNN notes , “Democrats pledged Friday to not only keep Social Security in place, but use the historic program against Republicans ahead of the Midterm Election.” Moderate Republicans in Congress will...

McConnell and Part D Premiums
It’s true, as McConnell says, that many seniors will see higher Premiums for Part D (that’s the Prescription drug coverage) as a result of the increased benefits in the program. How much higher? Monthly Premiums vary widely, but for the national average, the cost increase is expected to be $1.28 per month to start, gradually rising to $2.87 per month over the next several years. Furthermore, total out-of-pocket costs — including Premiums — will go down on average,...

Public Confidence in Health Care Dips
The American public’s Confidence in the Health Care system rose markedly after passage of the sprawling legislative package this year, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. But the measurement of Confidence quickly settled back to historical Levels, according to the monthly survey, as families turned from Rhetoric to reality. Changes in the new law are being put in place over 10 years, and the news has turned from political promises of Insurance...