Medicare | featured news

If the government can't pay all its bills come Wednesday, odds are it will pay bondholders. Social Security and Medicare recipients will be high on the must-pay list, too. Likely losers: federal workers in jobs deemed non-essential, private contractors and state and local governments....

President Obama seeks up to $4 trillion in deficit cuts, putting Social Security, Medicare, defense spending and tax reform on the table as part of a balanced approach to cuts, officials say.

Children on public insurance are being denied treatment by doctors at much higher rates than those with private coverage, according to an undercover ...

After Democrats won a special election dominated by Medicare, analysts predict a more competitive race next year for control of the House.

The special election race was dominated by the national debate over a GOP plan to overhaul Medicare. Democrat Kathy Hochul has won a special congressional election in a conservative pocket of western New York, a race dominated by the national debate over House Republicans’ proposal to overhaul Medicare, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

We're becoming a nation of bum knees, worn-out hips and sore shoulders, and it's not just the Medicare set. Baby boomer bones and joints also are taking a pounding, spawning a boom in operations to fix them. Knee replacement surgeries have doubled over the last decade and more than tripled in the 45-to-64 age group, new research shows. Hips are trending that way, too. And here's a surprise: It's not all due to obesity.

Well, no one can doubt anymore that Republicans are petrified that the Medicare cuts in Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget might cost them the 26th congressional district in New York, long a safe Republican seat, in the May 24 special election. It’s a classic technique in politics that if your opponent has found an issue that’s working against you, you turn the tables and declare your opponent’s position to be as bad as yours, or worse.

The bad economy has shortened the life of the trust funds that support Social Security and Medicare, the nation's two biggest benefit programs, the government reported Friday.

G.O.P. leaders insisted that they remained committed to overhauling Medicare, but chose not to proceed with legislation, effectively putting the issue off until after the next election.

Most Americans oppose the big spending cuts that many in Washington see as necessary to bring down the budget deficit, a new poll suggests, but they do support one idea for deficit reduction that President Barack Obama has pushed for years — raising taxes on the rich.