When President Obama embraced same-sex marriage last week, he tried to frame it as an issue for the states to resolve. But federal laws and policies are very much front and center in the battle for a level financial playing field for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans – especially seniors. And the Obama [...] [...more]
In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days, all the children are above average. In Washington, the same impossible math is being applied to Medicare’s managed-care insurance plans. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes funds to pay special bonuses to Medicare Advantage plans offering above-average quality of care. Instead, the Obama Administration is paying the bonuses to [...] [...more]
[View the story "Social Security Trustees Report" on Storify] [...more]
Americans don’t like the individual mandate – the requirement that most of us buy health insurance under the Obama Administration’s health reform law. Most Americans also don’t like paying taxes, but they are the price we pay to live in a civil society. So, setting aside the Constitutional questions being argued before the Supreme Court this [...] [...more]
The Republican Party doubled down on privatizing Medicare with the 2012 budget plan released this week by Republican Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin). It’s their latest pitch for a reform that would let seniors shop for coverage in an insurance exchange marketplace in lieu of traditional Medicare. The Ryan plan has little chance of passage this year, [...] [...more]
