By Mary Troyan; USA TODAY ~ Jan 24, 2017

WASHINGTON — The firebrand conservative congressman from South Carolina nominated to run President Trump’s budget office told Congress on Tuesday that if confirmed, he will make cutting the national debt a top priority. But he also suggested changes to entitlement programs that the new president has not endorsed.

“I believe, as a matter of principle, that the debt is a problem that must be addressed sooner, rather than later,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney said at the opening of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee.

By Toni Clarke & Susan Cornwell; Reuters ~ Jan 24, 2017

President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told a U.S. congressional panel on Tuesday that he does not support the privatization of Medicare.

Speaking before the Senate Committee on Finance, one of two committees that oversee the health department, Representative Tom Price, a Georgia orthopedic surgeon, also said his position reflects that of Trump, who has stated he does not want to cut Medicare.

By Scott Moritz; Bloomberg ~ Jan 20, 2017

• AT&T had lost 479,000 pay-TV users from March ’15 to Sept. ’16
• DirecTV Now benefited from $35-a-month promotion in the period

AT&T Inc. signed up new pay-TV customers for the first time in seven quarters thanks entirely to its new live online video service, DirecTV Now.

Pensions & Investments ~ Jan 20, 2017

Financial industry lobbyists on Friday were expecting quick action by the Trump administration to delay a Labor Department investment advice rule.

Staff members at two trade associations said they were anticipating a move as early as Friday afternoon, hours after Donald Trump was inaugurated, or on Jan. 23.

It could come in the form of a directive from the White House to acting agency heads to delay regulations that aren’t yet operational and to review them.

The lobbyists spoke on condition of anonymity.

By Mindy Yochelson; Bloomberg ~ Jan 19, 2017

No one said it would be a cinch reducing a mammoth taxpayer subsidized drug benefit.

The Medicare Part B benefit pays for drugs administered in doctors’ offices and outpatient facilities. It weighed in at $26 billion in 2015 and is growing at 9 percent a year.

Last year, the Medicare agency got clobbered with objections from thousands of interest groups and beneficiaries when it proposed a multifaceted demonstration from its innovation center to test alternative drug payment structures.

By Ronald Brownstein; The Atlantic ~  Jan 18, 2017

As congressional Republicans race to repeal and replace President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, one of their principal challenges is finding an alternative that does not expose older and less affluent white voters at the core of Donald Trump’s electoral coalition to greater costs and financial risk.

The paradox of the health-reform debate is that many of Obamacare’s key elements raised costs on younger and healthier people who generally vote Democratic as a means of limiting the financial exposure of older and sicker people, even as older whites have stampeded toward the GOP.

By David Lazarus; Los Angeles Times ~ Jan 17, 2017

Insurance companies are playing the odds, patient advocates say. They’re counting on people not having the stamina to challenge every denied claim, even when there’s a valid medical reason for a drug or treatment being covered.

“It’s intimidating,” said Betsy Imholz, special projects director for Consumers Union. “It’s hard to understand the process and many people feel that the default answer from insurers is no.”

By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool – Jan 16, 2017

Most retirees rely heavily on Social Security for their income in retirement, and annual cost-of-living increases are an important way for seniors to keep up with rising expenses. Yet many Social Security recipients believe that the price index that the Social Security Administration uses doesn’t accurately reflect the expenses that they pay. Instead, a measure called the CPI-E, or Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, aims to measure price changes for the items and services that seniors use most frequently.

By Caroline May; The Daily Caller ~ Jan 13, 2017

The share of Americans participating in the labor force will continue to drop over the coming decades, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates released Friday.

The CBO projects that over the next 30 years the labor force participation rate — or the percentage of noninstitutionalized civilians either working or looking for work — will decline 3.7 percentage points, from 62.8 percent in 2017 to 59.2 percent in 2047.

By Tami Abdollah & Matthew Perrone; The Associated Press ~ Jan 10, 2017

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Homeland Security Department warned Tuesday about an unusual cybersecurity flaw for one manufacturer’s implantable heart devices that it said could allow hackers to remotely take control of a person’s defibrillator or pacemaker.

Information on the security flaw, identified by researchers at MedSec Holdings in reports months ago, was only formally made public after the manufacturer, St. Jude Medical, made a software repair available Monday.