By Dan Jones; Light Reading ~ Feb 21, 2018
AT&T has revealed a few of the US cities in which it expects to launch mobile 5G services, towards the end of 2018.
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) said late Tuesday night that it expects to launch commercial 5G in parts of Atlanta, Dallas and Waco, Texas, in late 2018 as part of a 12-market rollout. (See AT&T Joins 5G Marketing War, Promising ‘Mobile’ Launch in 2018.)
By Sarah O’Brien, CNBC; USA TODAY ~ Feb 18, 2018
Brokers now have a couple of new weapons to help them battle financial fraud against older Americans.
One rule, which takes effect Monday, allows brokers to put a temporary hold on a requested account withdrawal if financial exploitation is suspected.
“A lot of times, advisors haven’t had the ability to stop a suspicious transaction,” said Marve Ann Alaimo, a partner at the law firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in Naples, Florida.
By Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News – Feb 15, 2018
Norm Thurston is a “free-market guy” — a conservative health economist in Republican-run Utah who rarely sees the government’s involvement in anything as beneficial.
But in a twist, the Utah state representative is now pushing the state to flex its muscle to spur federal action on ever-climbing prescription drug prices.
“This is something that a red state like Utah could do,” Thurston said. “Those outrageous cost increases are not the result of the free market.”
By Philip Moeller; PBS News Hour ~ Feb 14 2018
Seemingly overnight, big changes to Medicare morphed from being an item on various congressional wish lists into reality as part of last week’s budget deal, diverting me on my way to this week’s reader questions.
The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the financial impact of the budget deal includes five pages of detailed health care changes, and I suspect there are others that have yet to be reported.
By Alicia H. Munnell; MarketWatch ~ Feb 12, 2018
Should today’s workers have to bear the full burden?
Social Security is unlikely to appear on the political docket until 2021. (2018 is a congressional election year; 2019 is the lead-up to the next presidential campaign; and 2020 is a presidential election year.) But it is not too early to start thinking about how to solve Social Security’s long-run financing shortfall.
America’s most important social program isn’t in the best shape.
By Sean Williams; The Motley Fool ~ Feb 10, 2018
It could be rightly argued that Social Security is America’s most important social program. Not to take any light away from Medicare, but there’s simply no program out there more directly responsible for keeping retired workers out of poverty than Social Security. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Social Security’s monthly stipends ensure that 15.1 million seniors remain above the federal poverty line.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar & Matthew Perrone; The Associated Press ~ Feb 10, 2018
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump makes big promises to reduce prescription drug costs, but his administration is gravitating to relatively modest steps such as letting Medicare patients share in manufacturer rebates.
Those ideas would represent tangible change and they have a realistic chance of being enacted. But it’s not like calling for Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
By Katie Thomas and Reed Abelson, New York Times – Feb 9, 2018
When it comes to high drug prices, President Trump and members of Congress have been long on promises but short on action.
But that appears to be changing: The White House on Friday released a report recommending significant changes that would affect drug costs and the president’s budget proposal on Monday is expected to include some plans to expand drug coverage under Medicare.
From Howard Gleckman; Forbes ~ Feb 09, 2018
The huge two-year budget agreement reached by Congress early this morning will, for the first time, allow Medicare to pay for some long-term supports and services. Medicare managed-care plans, called Medicare Advantage (MA), can now include nonmedical services, such as home-delivered meals or rides to a doctor, in their benefit packages.
By Peter Sullivan; The Hill ~ Feb 09, 2018
The Trump administration on Friday laid out its most in-depth proposal to fight high drug prices yet, acting on an area that is a high priority for President Trump but has seen little movement so far.
A 28-page document released by the White House on Friday, ahead of the president’s budget proposal on Monday, lays out a range of policies aimed at making medication more affordable, also a top priority for the public in polling.
