Senior Voice -

Normally, in a presidential election year, Congress doesn’t get much done. This year is no exception. But with a few months before July’s political nominating conventions, a brief window of productivity exists and some lawmakers are pushing bip...

Most Americans and leading presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle support the idea that the federal government should lower drug prices. But it's not likely to happen any time soon even though the Obama administration and Congress are...

Editor's note: This is an expanded version of the story appearing in the April 2016 Senior Voice print edition. The next big health crisis is the battle over chronic care and long-term care. Patient advocates, policy experts and lawmakers call it...

Editor’s note: The ACOs discussed in this national story have not reached Alaska, but the emphasis on outcomes for patients and reimbursing for coordinated care will become increasingly relevant to the health care system as a whole. Big changes a...

As the 2016 presidential primaries and the nomination fights move to the political front burner, a look at the health care and Medicare policies of the candidates raises questions of how far the candidates and their parties want to go in pushing for...

A new law signed by President Obama will help shield some 17 million Americans from steep premium hikes. But many will continue to see changes in the amounts they pay for Medicare next year. About 30 percent of Medicare beneficiaries were facing a 52...

Medicare’s open enrollment, the time you can keep or switch your Medicare coverage, runs from October 15 until December 7. To Medicare scammers, open enrollment means open season on seniors. The best advice to prevent yourself from being taken a...

Here is some Medicare bad news, disguised as good news. Congress has finally moved to change the laws about observation care, a problem that’s been vexing seniors for years because the laws are unclear. This has forced millions of seniors to face h...

Doctors are different than you and I. They know how to die. They do not tell family and colleagues to do “everything you can” to save them. This may surprise you, but doctors often choose less end-of-life care for themselves than the average patient...

Millions of seniors are struggling to put food on the table, a dramatic spike in the problem, according to two new reports. Despite the recent uptick in the U.S. economy, an astonishingly large number of Americans – 9.6 million over the age of 60 ...

The prices that hospitals ask customers to pay for a series of common procedures have increased by more than 10 percent between 2011 and 2013 – more than double the rate of inflation, according to new data released recently by Medicare. But the a...

Check off “budget” on the Republicans “can govern” checklist. Congressional Republicans recently approved a budget bill, the first passed by Congress in six years, and the first since the party took control of both chambers earlier this year. T...

For the second time in three years, the U.S. Supreme Court could determine the fate of the president’s health care law with a case coming up for oral arguments in March. While a limited number of seniors are covered under the health care law, a Court...

Medicare is like a government octopus, with its tentacles stretching into almost every aspect of senior life. With its policies affecting 50 million beneficiaries, this agency has a lot going on simultaneously. Sometimes, policies it puts in place...

Last summer’s viral “ice bucket challenge” focused attention and helped raise money for ALS – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – a disease that impairs motor function so people often can’t talk or even move. But while public attention focused peo...

Sovaldi, a new drug, which has been hailed as a breakthrough treatment for the 3.2 million Americans infected with hepatitis C, costs $1,000 a pill. While it is highly effective and has fewer side effects and takes less time than older therapies, it...

Dying patients may find it more difficult to get certain medications under new rules Medicare has recently put in place. Meanwhile, another set of rules could make it easier for seniors to get Medicare to pay for home health care services. Medicare h...

The White House, after an aggressive pushback from seniors, patients, pharmaceutical companies and lawmakers from both parties, recently scrapped most of a proposed plan to limit Medicare coverage for certain classes of drugs including those used to...

When do you fix a government program that’s not broken? That’s the question many in Washington are asking, after Medicare recently proposed a series of changes to its Part D prescription drug program – a program that, by most everyone’s view, i...

Ever forget to take your pills or simply fail to measure your blood sugar or some other routine health care daily chores? Would it help you remember if you knew that a nurse was coming by regularly to check in and make sure you were doing what you...

While the Obama administration battles with the Republican House of Representatives this summer in the public relations fight over getting people to sign up for the new health care insurance coverage, key decisions affecting millions of poor folks ar...

After five days in the hospital with a fractured spine, Jean Arnau was discharged and needed to transfer to a skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation. Only then did her family find out that she had never been formally admitted as an inpatient to...

President Barack Obama took a political gamble at the beginning of April by proposing to curb the growth of Medicare and Social Security. In upsetting his liberal political base, Obama hopes his concessions will draw rank and file Senate Republicans...