Medicare News Blog

The two Democratic candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform that John Edwards built.

THURSDAY, Jan. 31 — The three-year-old Medicare Part D drug program is seeing the number of its enrollees climb, even as costs for the program fall, U.S. health officials announced Thursday.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement today following news reports that President Bush plans large cuts in Medicare and medicaid when he unveils his fiscal 2009 budget next week:

Jan. 31, 2008 – Medicare today issued another news release touting the drop in the cost of the prescription drug program from what it had earlier projected.

Statement attributable to: Tracey Moorhead, President and Chief Executive Officer, DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance “Tens of thousands of chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries today face a distressing gap in access to valuable support services for managing their conditions.

In his new budget, President Bush will call for large cuts in the growth of Medicare and he will again seek major savings in medicaid.

In his new budget, President Bush will call for large cuts in the growth of Medicare and he will again seek major savings in medicaid.

Susquehanna Health recently received good news � its Medicare reimbursement will continue to be funded at levels comparable to other area hospitals � at least for now.

In his new budget, President Bush will call for large cuts in the growth of Medicare and he will again seek major savings in medicaid.

The largest study to date of over 45,000 Medicare recipients who had been treated for abdominal aortic aneurysms shows that endovascular repair, a less invasive way to treat the condition compared with open surgery, has the best health outcomes for patients.

“Drug spending for Medicare did increase” in 2006, but media accounts of a recent Health Affairs study that said such spending prompted increases in health care costs and overall spending for the program were “wrong,” Robert Goldberg, vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, writes in a Washington Times opinion piece.

Jan. 30, 2008 – Despite the skyrocketing costs of Medicare and the demand for informed decisions, Medicare is using clinical trials with participants that do not match the characteristics of beneficiaries to make decisions about cardiovascular products and services.

The President punted on Medicare in his State of the Union address, lumping together Medicare with medicaid and Social Security and telling Congress to fix them. The Center for Medicare Advocacy works on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries to ensure they get the health care they need.

An overwhelming majority of American voters say they would vote for Congressional candidates who would strengthen Medicare coverage for power wheelchairs, oxygen devices, hospital beds, and other durable medical equipment and services used in the home. Three-quarters of voters believe homecare is part of the solution to the problem of rapidly increasing Medicare spending.

The costs of caring for elderly people with diabetes, a growing population, are threatening to overwhelm the system designed to pay for their medical care, according to a new analysis of Medicare claims.