News Related to Medicare

1. Shop Around if You Pay for Pills
   

   May 5, 2008 -- If you shell out cash for prescription drugs, you may want to shop around for the best price. That's according to a new survey from Consumer Reports. Researchers from the magazine made more than 500 telephone calls to 163 pharmacies in the U.S. to compare prices on four popular prescr

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2. Cancer Price Tag in Billions for Elders
   

   April 29, 2008 -- Medicare costs for cancer are expected to reach $21 billion dollars for five years of care. That's according to the latest data from the National Cancer Institute. Researchers found that when it comes to paying for cancer care, the price tag may depend on the cancer type, the phase

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3. Medicare Patients Cut Back on Prescriptions
   

   April 22, 2008 -- Nearly one-fifth of ill Medicare patients cut back on their medications to save money, despite being covered by the program's Part D drug plan, a study shows. The report shows that in 2006, 20% of Medicare Part D beneficiaries -- in fair or poor health -- skipped medications, cut p

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4. Crisis Ahead for Elderly Health Care?
   

   April 14, 2008 -- Experts warned Monday that the United States faces a massive health care shortage that threatens to leave millions of seniors without proper health care within the next three decades. A report issued by the Institute of Medicine says that medical and nursing schools are training fa

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5. Gov't Launches Hospital Comparisons Site
   

   March 28, 2008 -- Federal health officials released the latest version of a web site Friday that lets the public compare about 2,500 hospitals on some measures of quality. The site pulls together some information that Medicare has made available to the public since 2005. Officials say the effort wou

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6. Experts Predict Medicare Fund Shortage
   

   March 25, 2008 -- Medicare's trust fund will spend more than it receives from taxes this year, a report warned Wednesday. The event marks the beginning of what Bush administration officials predict is the start of a slide toward possible bankruptcy for Medicare's Part A Trust Fund, which pays hospit

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7. Brand-Name Prescription Drug Costs Up
   

   March 5, 2008 -- The cost of brand-name prescription drugs rose again in 2007, according to the advocacy group AARP. But the prescription drug industry says AARP's numbers miss the mark. The AARP Public Policy Institute's latest Rx Watchdog Report tracks the prices that manufacturers charge wholesal

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8. Health Spending to Double by 2017
   

   Feb. 26, 2008 -- Health care spending will take up a fifth of the U.S. economy in the next decade, according to government economic projections released today. Government economists predict that the nation's total health care bill will nearly double from $2.2 trillion this year to $4.3 trillion by 2

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9. Bush Proposes Health Cuts in Budget
   

   Feb. 4, 2008 -- Government health care programs would face deep cuts under a federal budget proposed by the Bush administration on Monday. The $3.1 trillion budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 proposes cutting Medicare by $183 billion over the next five years, including $13 billion in cuts n

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10. U.S. Health Care: $2.1 Trillion in '06
    

    Jan. 8, 2008 -- The United States spent a record $2.1 trillion on health care in 2006, nearly 7% more than the year before, according to federal data released Tuesday. Overall, the annual figures show that the nation's health care spending is growing more slowly that it did in the late 1990s. But so

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