What We're Reading: Medicare Winners and Losers; Trump's Healthcare Priorities; Dying Vets Risk Eviction

Which Medicare Beneficiaries Win or Lose in Budget Proposal?

President Trump’s budget plan would help some Medicare beneficiaries more than others, the Associated Press reported. About a million beneficiaries with the highest prescription drug costs, whose individual bills reach a total of more than $8418 apiece, will come out on top. But about 4.5 million seniors whose total bills range between $3750 and $8418 could end up spending about $1000 more, because the budget proposes a change in how Medicare accounts for manufacturer discounts received by those patients.

Healthcare Cuts Included in Trump FY2019 Plan Congress Expected to Disregard

The White House fiscal 2019 budget is largely considered a messaging document with no chance of passage, coming as Congress moves ahead with its own spending plan, The New York Times reported. However, the budget proposes again to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act and to eliminate the law’s expansion of Medicaid. More than 30 states have already expanded Medicaid and GOP efforts to end the law failed in last year. The budget also proposes cuts of $69.5 billion over 10 years in projected Medicare payments to hospitals for “uncompensated care”; more than $95 billion over 10 years from nursing homes and home health agencies; $22 billion from Medicare Advantage plans; and $48 billion over 10 years in Medicare payments to teaching hospitals for graduate medical education.

California Regulation Would Evict Vets Who Seek Aid-In-Dying

A controversy is brewing in California where the law that allows terminally ill people to take lethal drugs to end their lives is running into conflict with a regulation that bars residents in veterans homes from using it, Kaiser Health News reported. Advocates of medical aid-in-dying and residents of the Veterans Home of California-Yountville are protesting the regulation from the California Department of Veterans Affairs that requires that anyone living in the facilities to be discharged if they intend to use the law.