Robert E. Moffit: Here's how Congress can save Medicare

  When will Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund run out of money? A newly released report from the Medicare Trustees says it will be exhausted in 2028—two years earlier than they projected last year. Using slightly different assumptions, the Congressional Budget Office earlier predicted that the trust fund would be insolvent by 2026.

  No matter how you slice it, the fund meets neither short-term nor long-term standards of “financial adequacy” (to use the trustees’ term). But the Trust Fund’s precarious financial state is merely the symptom of a more serious problem: the growth of Medicare spending and financial burdens on seniors and taxpayers.

New Medicare and Medicaid services proposal tests ways to lower drug expenditures

  The current payment methodology for drugs covered under Medicare Part B, which includes costly physician-administered drugs, does not work for patients. It encourages drug companies to charge sky-high prices and creates financial incentives to overprescribe higher-priced drugs, increasing patient costs. This is why the Center for American Progress strongly supports a proposal by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, to test new ways to pay for these medications.