Extra SNAP Benefits Will End Nationwide In February

Axios: SNAP Benefits Returning To Pre-COVID Amounts In February
The extra food assistance benefits put into place during the COVID-19 pandemic will end nationwide in February, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. The emergency allotments allowed SNAP households to receive an additional $95 or more in monthly benefits. (Habeshian, 1/28)

Columbus Dispatch: Franklin County Will Lose $163,000 In Food Stamp Benefits In March
For Jasmine Wooten, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated an already grim situation. The 33-year-old social worker and mother of two, who lives on the Near East Side, was already getting food benefits when the pandemic hit. Nearly three years later, it's become even more difficult to put food on the table, due in part to inflation, misperceptions about those who get benefits and lack of empathy from people in power, she said. (Shuda, 1/27)

FOX8 WGHP: North Carolina Families Lose Hundreds In SNAP Benefits Due To Card Skimmers 
There have been over 800 reports filed in the Piedmont Triad of card skimmers impacting people’s EBT cards. Most of the cases are in Guilford, Randolph and Yadkin Counties. Nearly a dozen were reported in January, linked to two Walmart stores in High Point. Emily Deaton lost nearly $800 after a trip to the Walmart on North Main Street in High Point, after going to buy party supplies for her two-year-old son’s birthday. “They had said I had six dollars left and I had almost 800 dollars in food stamps the day before,” she said. (Skipper, 1/27)

The New Republic: A Nationwide Fight Over Food Insecurity Is Just Beginning 
A new bill introduced by Republican state lawmakers in Iowa would significantly restrict food purchases for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, previously known as food stamps. Among the excluded products are American cheese, white rice, baked or refried beans and fresh meat—limits to which recipients of another nutrition assistance program are already subjected. The legislation is not a fringe proposal; it is co-sponsored by dozens of Republicans, including the state House speaker. But the bill, which garnered national headlines, represents in microcosm a larger conversation about welfare policies: questions about who should have access to such benefits and the conditions for receiving them. (Segers, 1/27)

In news about Medicare benefits —

The Hill: White House Blasts McCarthy For Comments On Strengthening Social Security, Medicare
The White House hit back after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he wants to “strengthen” Medicare and Social Security, arguing on Sunday that the House GOP leader and his conference actually want to slash spending on the entitlement programs. McCarthy said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier Sunday that he wants to take cuts to Medicare and Social Security off the table in talks with Democrats over the debt ceiling, even though Republicans do want commitments on spending cuts generally. Instead, McCarthy said Republicans were committed to strengthening the programs. (Neukam, 1/29)

The Hill: McCarthy: Social Security, Medicare Cuts ‘Off The Table’
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said ahead of a meeting with President Biden this week that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table in talks around raising the debt limit. McCarthy has said that Republicans want commitments to spending reductions in exchange for raising the debt limit but has been unclear about what exactly the GOP would be willing to cut. While he said Medicare and Social Security slashes are off the table in his interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, he essentially said everything else, including defense spending, is under the microscope. (Neukam, 1/29)

NBC News: Medicare Negotiating Drug Prices Will Likely Save The U.S. Billions, Study Says
Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School estimated how much money the new policy would have saved the U.S. had it been in effect from 2018 to 2020 — the most recent years for which data is available on Medicare spending. They identified 40 drugs that would have been selected by Medicare for drug pricing negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act's provision. (Lovelace Jr., 1/27)

Stat: Lengthy Battle Over Medicare Advantage Audits Comes To A Head
The federal government and health insurance companies have been clashing for more than a decade over how Medicare Advantage plans should be audited and how the well-documented overpayments to those plans should be clawed back. That fight is about to hit an inflection point this week, when Medicare makes a final determination about how aggressively it will probe the industry. (Herman, 1/30)