30 million Americans over 60 years old have difficulty hearing, but less than a third can afford hearing aids, according to a report to President Barack Obama by his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology two weeks ago. Even though hearing loss is often part of the natural aging process, the council did not recommend that Medicare, pay for hearing aids, which can cost an average of $5,000 to $6,000 for a pair. [Continued Don’t Just Renew Your Medicare Plan. Shopping Around Can Save Money.
By Susan Jaffe | October 15, 2015 | Kaiser Health News in collaboration with Money magazine
Ten years after a prescription drug benefit was added to Medicare, 39 million older or disabled Amer
icans have coverage to help pay for their medicine, including most of the 17 million with private insurance policies known as Medicare Advantage, an alternative to traditional Medicare.
The annual enrollment
period for these private drug and Advantage plans for 2016 starts Thursday and runs through Dec. 7.
It pays to shop around. The monthly cost is increasing an average 26 percent for UnitedHealthcare’s AARP MedicareRx Saver Plus while the First Health Value Plus plan
is dropping an average 13 percent, according to an analysis of the 10 most popular drug plans by Avalere Health, a research firm.
Some actual costs may be even more dramatic. In Albany, N.Y., the price of a Cigna-HealthSpring drug plan is going up 36 percent, according to the StateWide Senior Action Council, a New York consumer group. [More in Kaiser Health News or Money magazine]
Medicare Advantage Plans Need Tougher Oversight, GAO Says
| Connecticut Health Investigative Team Writer | October 5, 2015
Federal investigators have found that Medicare officials rarely enforce rules for private insurance plans intended to make sure beneficiaries will be able to see a doctor when they need care.
It’s a problem many Connecticut seniors know too well. In 2013, UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest health insurance company, dropped hundreds of health care providers from its 
Connecticut Medicare Advantage plan, including 1,200 doctors at the Yale Medical Group and Yale-New Haven Hospital. Medicare Advantage beneficiaries scrambled to find new insurance or new doctors while the Fairfield and Hartford counties medical associations went to court to try to stop the terminations.
The report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said that Medicare did not check provider networks to ensure that doctors were available to beneficiaries and cited Connecticut as a “case study” in what can go wrong.
The GAO report shows that Medicare “was not verifying network adequacy. That’s their job and they abdicated that responsibility,” said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-New Haven, who requested the investigation along with other members of the Connecticut congressional delegation. MORE
To Sell Medical Students On Joys Of Geriatrics, Send In 90-Year-Olds
By Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | September 23, 2015 | This KHN story also ran in 
When doctors told Robert Madison that his wife had dementia, they didn’t explain very much. His successful career as an architect hardly prepared him for what came next.
Belle Likover, a 95-year-old retired social worker, told Case Western Reserve medical students that growing old gracefully is all about being able to adapt to one’s changing life situation, including health challenges. Lynn Ischay/Kaiser Health News
“A week before she passed away her behavior was different, and I was angry because I thought she was deliberately not doing things,” Madison, now 92, told a group of nearly 200 students at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland. “You are knowledgeable in treating patients, but I’m the patient, too, and if someone had said she can’t control anything, I would have been better able to understand what was taking place.”
Belle Likover recounted for the students how she insisted when her husband was dying of lymphoma that doctors in the hospital not make decisions without involving his oncologist. “When someone is in the hospital, they need an advocate with them at all times,” said Likover, who turns 96 next month. “But to expect that from families when they are in crisis is expecting too much. The medical profession has to address that.”
Madison and Likover were among six people all over the age of 90 invited to talk to second-year medical students this month. The annual panel discussion, called “Life Over 90,” is aimed at nudging students toward choosing geriatric medicine, the primary care field that focuses on the elderly. It is among the lowest-paid specialties, and geriatricians must contend with complex cases that are time consuming and are often not reimbursed well by Medicare or private insurance. And their patients can have diseases that can only be managed but never cured [Continued at Kaiser Health News and at NPR]
USA gears up for next round of enrolment under the ACA
24 October 2015
WORLD REPORT As enrolment begins for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance, officials cut estimates of how many Americans will get coverage. Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.
The past 2 years of President Barack Obama’s landmark health insurance programme haven’
t been easy—surviving two Supreme Court challenges, nearly done-in by embarrassing technical glitches, and more than 50 congressional votes attempting to dismantle it. But its troubles are not yet over: enrolling new beneficiaries “is going to be tougher than last year”, warned Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
Burwell and other Obama Administration officials are damping down enrolment expectations just days before the 3-month sign-up period for 2016 coverage begins on Nov 1. [Continued here ]
End in sight for revision of US medical research rules
Volume 386, Number 10000
26 September 2015
WORLD REPORT End in sight for revision of US medical research rules US health officials expect to update 25-year-old regulations on human participation in research by the end of next year. Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.
After proposing massive changes 4 years ago to rules first issued in 1991 protecting people participating in research studies, federal health officials produced yet another revision earlier this month and say the effort to update the rules is on a fast track.
The revolution in science, technology, medicine, and public involvement that has transformed biomedical research over the past 25 years might be sufficient reason for the latest update, a daunting task that began in 2009, shortly after Barack Obama became president. But now there’s another factor driving the effort. [Continued here]
U.S. House of Representatives possibly “injured” by ACA spending, judge OKs lawsuit
Susan Jaffe | Washington Correspondent for The Lancet | 15th September 2015
A new threat to the Affordable Care Act emerged last week when a federal judge decided to allow an unusual lawsuit by Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives against President Barack Obama, claiming that his Administration violated the U. S. Constitution by spending billions of dollars for the Affordable Care Act that Congress did not approve. [Continued here] House of Representatives 091515
Billions served but Cleveland Clinic says no thanks to McDonald’s
Susan Jaffe | Washington Correspondent for The Lancet 9th September 2015
McDonald’s, the giant fast-food restaurant chain, has been adding healthy options to its menu of burgers, fries and shakes, but the new choices are too little, too late for the Cleveland Clinic.
After 20 years of serving patients, visitors, and Clinic employees in Cleveland, Ohio, the restaurant’s last day will be September 18. The world renowned hospital is not renewing its contract with McDonald’s.
“As a part of Cleveland Clinic’s commitment to health and wellness, we have made a number of changes across our health system over the past ten years that promote healthy food choices, exercise, and a smoke free environment,” said Eileen Sheil, the Clinic’s executive director for corporate communications, explaining why McDonald’s had to go. [Continued here]
Home-Care Workers
Susan Jaffe | Washington Correspondent for The Lancet | 28 August 2015
Home-care workers are excluded from the federal law requiring most employees to receive a minimum wage—currently $7·25 an hour—and 150% of that pay when they work overtime. After 40 years, the US Department of Labor (DOL) issued rules eliminating that exemption. The new rule was supposed to take effect last January but it was blocked by a lawsuit filed by associations representing companies that hire these workers. [Continued here.] [with video of Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky shadowing home-care worker Gilda Pipersburgh]
Congressional showdown threatens NIH funding boost
Volume 386, Issue 9996, 29 August 2015
WORLD REPORT Bills providing extra funding for the National Institutes of Health while cutting other programmes could a face presidential veto. Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.
After years of mostly stagnant funding for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), two powerful congressional committees that control government spending have approved separate budget bills containing record increases for the agency.
But last month, President Barack Obama’s Office of Management and Budget director Shaun Donovan wrote to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations warning that he expects the president to veto its bill. Among other reasons, Donovan said it “drastically” cuts money for public health programmes including Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid, serving low-income Americans. And it would deny funds for operating the health insurance exchanges essential to the president’s signature health reform law, the Affordable Care Act. [Continued in full text or PDF ]
Clean Power Plan
Susan Jaffe | Washington Correspondent for The Lancet 25th August 2015
Before President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan can inspire other nations to control greenhouse gases by following the USA’s lead in dramatically reducing carbon emissions, the Administration has to convince West Virginia—and at least 15 other skeptical states. [Continued here]
21st Century Cures
12 August 2015
A dispatch from our Washington correspondent on the sluggish progress of the 21st Century Cures Act.
Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives last month overwhelmingly passed the 21st Century Cures Act aimed at speeding up drug development. But the Senate is not expected to vote on its version until next year.
More than 80 percent of the House backed the legislation after it was unanimously — a word rarely heard on Capitol Hill — approved by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In the process, the bill was revised to address concerns that drug approvals would happen a little too quickly, circumventing safety and efficacy standards. [Continued here]
50 Years of Medicare
Volume 386, Issue 9992, 1 August 2015
WORLD REPORT In July, 1965, Medicare, America’s landmark national health insurance programme, became law. Today, it covers 55 million people. Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.
An American woman thanks President Lyndon Johnson for Medicare, April, 1965.
Richard Troeh joined a very busy solo family medicine practice in 1966 but even with two doctors, their offi ce in Independence, Missouri, seemed just as hectic. The year before, President Lyndon Baines Johnson came to town to sign the Medicare legislation into law at the Truman library. Former President Harry Truman—an advocate of national health insurance since the 1940s—and his wife attended the event and were among the fi rst Americans to receive Medicare cards.
50 years later, the Social Security Amendments of 1965 provide health care for 55 million people older than 65 years or disabled receiving Medicare and nearly 73 million low-income adults, children, pregnant women, and people with disabilities receiving Medicaid, an optional programme also created under the same law.
And in the process, the government programmes have transformed health care in the USA. Medicare is the nation’s largest single purchaser of health care, consuming 14% of last year’s federal budget, or US$505 billion. And it also has a fiercely loyal following that opposes efforts to cut benefits. Speaking earlier this month at the White House Conference on Aging, President Barack Obama drew laughs when he said, “And now we’ve got [protest] signs saying, “Get your government hands off of my Medicare”. [Continued in full text or PDF ] [listen to podcast here]
Congress Overwhelmingly Approves Bill Bolstering Medicare Patients’ Hospital Rights
By Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | July 29, 2015 | This KHN story also ran in 
The U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation Monday night requiring hospitals across the nation to tell Medicare patients when they receive observation care but have not been admitted to the hospital. It’s a distinction that’s easy to
miss until patients are hit with big medical bills after a short stay.
The vote follows overwhelming approval in the U. S. House of Representatives in March. The legislation is expected to be signed into law by President Barack Obama, said its House sponsor, Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett.
It’s called the NOTICE Act, short for “Notice of Observation Treatment and Implication for Care Eligibility.” The law would require hospitals to provide written notification to patients 24 hours after receiving observation care, explaining that they have not been admitted to the hospital, the reasons why, and the potential financial implications.
Those implications can be dire. Observation care hurts seniors in two ways: It keeps Medicare’s more comprehensive hospitalization coverage from kicking in, and it means they may not get Medicare’s limited nursing home benefit if they need care in a facility after being in a hospital.
To qualify for Medicare’s nursing home coverage, beneficiaries must first spend three consecutive midnights as an admitted patient in a hospital, and observation days don’t count. Without that coverage, seniors could pay thousands of dollars for the nursing home care their doctor ordered, or else try to recover on their own. Observation care is a classification used when patients are not well enough to go home but not sick enough to be admitted. [Continued in Kaiser Health News]
New Regulations Would Require Modernizing Nursing Home Care
By Susan Jaffe | July 13, 2015 | Kaiser Health News in collaboration with
After nearly 30 years, the Obama administration wants to modernize the rules nursing homes must follow to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid payments.
The hundreds of pages of proposed changes cover everything from meal times to use of 
antipsychotic drugs to staffing. Some are required by the Affordable Care Act and other recent federal laws, as well as the president’s executive order directing agencies to simplify regulations and minimize the costs of compliance.
“Today’s measures set high standards for quality and safety in nursing homes and long-term care facilities,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell. “When a family makes the decision for a loved one to be placed
in a nursing home or long-term care facility, they need to know that their loved one’s health and safety are priorities.”
Officials announced the update as the White House Conference on Aging convenes Monday. The once-a-decade conclave sets the agenda for meeting the diverse needs of older Americans, including long-term care options. This month also marks the 50th anniversary of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which cover almost 125 million older, disabled or low-income Americans. Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries make up the majority of residents in the country’s more than 15,000 long-term care facilities. [MORE from Kaiser Health News and NPR]