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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Health Care Reform Shows Signs of Saving Medicare Budget

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Thursday, March 15, 2012   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine published March 7, 2012, health care reform is already slowing the growth in the cost of Medicare - a crucial change that could save the program from bankruptcy. That is good news for many West Virginians, since the state has one of the oldest populations in the country and one of the highest percentages of citizens in the Medicare program.

The researchers crunched numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Medicare trustees and found that the cost trend is changing direction. Lead author and senior health researcher Chapin White says the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed two years ago included provisions that are bringing Medicare's costs down to a manageable level, nearer the rate of general inflation.

"Just by dialing back the prices it pays, Medicare took major steps in the direction of saving money."

Medicare is a vital source of health care for seniors. Many fear it could be overwhelmed by baby boomers and exploding price increases. Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have said Medicare must be privatized to survive.

White, however, says the new numbers show that the current structure can work. The program has been able to cut costs sharply in the past, he adds, although the federal government has occasionally undone its own progress.

"We seem to be at another falling-off point in the roller-coaster ride where CBO is projecting that the Medicare provisions in the ACA are going to result in much slower growth in spending over the next 10 years."

He says the new numbers mean the picture has changed substantially.

"It's very significant. I don't know if the policy community has really absorbed how big an impact the slowdown in Medicare price growth is having."

White says Medicare is now using its market power to negotiate with health care providers who used to have more ability to set prices.

"They basically had a blank check from the Medicare program that would cover those costs. Now, Medicare has moved away from that basically blank-check arrangement toward a situation where Medicare is setting the prices."

The article is available at www.nejm.org.



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