Bipartisan Effort to Fix Medicare Doc Payments

There is a rare, ongoing bipartisan effort in Congress to permanently fix the payment problem for doctors treating their Medicare patients.  In short, it will change the payment formula to stop the reductions by two primary methods.  One is to enact an income based adjustment for high income earners and Two, consider a deductible for Medicare Supplement policies.  Stay tuned for more info.  The link below describes current status in more detail.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/medicare-doctors-john-boehner-nancy-pelosi-116097.html

President Obama’s Budget affect on Medicare

President Obama’s recent budget proposes to save $399 Billion out of Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years.   The bulk of the cost savings will affect Medicare beneficiaries in several ways.  It will cut the amount paid to providers, introduce new copays, impose a surcharge on certain Supplement Plans and reduce the amount paid to insurers of Advantage plans which would increase the cost to consumers.  A link follows to an article with more information.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/us/politics/under-obama-budget-many-medicare-recipients-would-pay-more.html?ref=topics