Medicare & Aging: Sept. 8, 2022

‘It’s Becoming Too Expensive to Live’: Anxious Older Adults Try to Cope With Limited Budgets
By Judith Graham Three women explain how life’s surprises can catapult their efforts to carefully manage limited budgets and lead to financial distress.

Inflation Reduction Act Contains Important Cost-Saving Changes for Many Patients — Maybe for You 
By Michael McAuliff The legislation, which the House is expected to pass Friday, would allow the federal government, for the first time, to negotiate the price of some drugs that Medicare buys. It also would extend the enhanced subsidies for people who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

For Medically Vulnerable Families, Inflation’s Squeeze Is Inescapable
By Heidi de Marco Inflation hasn’t hit Americans like this in decades. And families living with chronic diseases have little choice but to pay more for the medicine, supplies, and food they need to stay healthy.

‘Science Friday’ and KHN: Examining Medicine’s Definition of Death Informs the Abortion Debate
By Sarah Varney Why is it so hard to agree when life begins? As state abortion laws define it, science, politics, and religion are clashing. KHN’s Sarah Varney shared her reporting with the “Science Friday” radio program.

Watch: How Nursing Homes Put Friends and Families on the Hook for Residents’ Debts
In pursuit of unpaid bills, nursing homes across Rochester, New York, have been suing relatives and friends of their residents. This CBS News report, done in partnership with a KHN-NPR investigation, takes a look at the practice and tells the stories of some of the people affected.

Cognitive Rehab May Help Older Adults Clear Covid-Related Brain Fog
By Judith Graham People whose brains have been injured by concussions, traumatic accidents, strokes, or neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease can benefit from targeted therapy. Experts also employ therapies for long-covid patients with memory and language problems.

Unraveling the Interplay of Omicron, Reinfections, and Long Covid
By Liz Szabo The omicron variant has proved adept at finding hosts, often by reinfecting people who recovered from earlier bouts of covid. But whether omicron triggers long covid as often and severe as previous variants is a matter of heated study.

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Wrapping Up Summer’s Health News
President Joe Biden has signed the Inflation Reduction Act and Congress is gone until after Labor Day. But the administration and lawmakers left lots of health policy achievements behind, including new rules to facilitate the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids and a potential reorganization of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, for extra credit, the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.

‘An Arm and a Leg’: How to Negotiate for Lower Medical Bills
By Dan Weissmann A nonprofit that trains people to apply for charity care has started teaching others how to negotiate with hospitals and debt collectors to lower the amount they owe.

Journalists Dig Into Questions About the 988 Hotline and Inflation Reduction Act
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.