Each year, an obscure federal rule forces thousands of seniors to pay penalties for the rest of their lives simply because they made an honest mistake while signing up for Medicare. That number will rise unless Congress modernizes the program’s enrollment process, which is tethered to outdated ideas about seniors and retirement. Seniors are twice as likely to be working today as in 1985. So many more of them have to decide whether to sign up for Medicare when they become eligible at age 65 or keep their job-based health plan. Making the wrong decision can be costly.
At a time when higher grocery bills and surging gas prices are taking big, toothy bites out of your paycheck, it can feel like everything suddenly costs more in America. But at least one item — a critically important one at that — has seen its cost fall for the third year in a row. A new report by the Urban Institute has found that the cost of health insurance plans sold on Obamacare marketplaces has shrunk each year since premiums rose dramatically in 2017 and 2018.
It has been one week since open enrollment began for Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma. Officials say there are about 200,000 Oklahomans that qualify for Medicaid expansion, and thousands have already signed up for healthcare benefits. In fact, almost 100,000 Oklahomans have already signed up for Medicaid.
Ellen Phillips hasn’t eaten much solid food over the past year and a half. She has lost all of her upper teeth — badly infected, they had to be extracted in 2019. Her tongue is constantly swollen. “I do well with Cheerios, applesauce and chocolate pudding, but I literally choke if I try to eat solid food, and that’s not how I should be eating,” said Ms. Phillips, 76, who is diabetic.
A lawsuit that sought to block Nebraska from imposing a two-tiered Medicaid expansion system with more benefits for people working, volunteering or meeting other requirements is on hold after state officials said they would give all participants the same benefits.
For many low-income people in the US, getting insured isn’t enough to get health care: Patients with Medicaid can struggle to find a doctor willing to take their health insurance. And this happens in large part because, for doctors and providers, billing Medicaid is a pain. A recent study by researchers from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the University of Chicago, and the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco found providers run into more obstacles when trying to bill Medicaid than they do with other insurers, and that these administrative hurdles explain the access problems experienced by Medicaid patients as much as the program’s payment rates.