Us old farts have been holding our breath for Donny and his Magic Sharpie have not been too busy with our healthcare problem….but that is about to change….

Large health insurers saw their stocks pop earlier this week, after administration officials announced they would boost benchmark payment rates for Medicare Advantage plans by 5.1% this year — the largest such increase in a decade, and more than double the one first proposed by the Biden administration. The bump means carriers should pocket $25 billion in extra revenue, according to CMS.

The Trump administration was widely expected to be more friendly to Medicare Advantage plans, especially after it appointed Dr. Oz, who had a long record of promoting the private plans on his show, to head CMS. The new payments were reportedly finalized without the celebrity doctor’s input — he was only confirmed by the Senate late last week. But they could both boost insurers profits and help them pay for additional benefits that would attract patients.

The bump could also exacerbate concerns about Medicare Advantage overpayments, which were already expected to cost the government well over $1 trillion during the next decade. According to the administration, the benchmark rate was driven higher by updated estimates of Medicare Fee-for-Service costs, which underpin the formula the government uses to compensate private insurers that sell advantage plans. But Jeffries’ analyst David Windley suggested some politics were still at play.

Then there is the news on prescription drugs….

Trump may have backed down on his staggering round of “reciprocal” tariffs, but the world’s drug makers still have plenty to be nervous about when it comes to trade. On Tuesday, the president said he would impose “major” new import taxes on pharmaceuticals “very shortly.”

“And when they hear that, they will leave China. They will leave other places because they have to sell — most of their product is sold here, and they’re going to be opening up their plants all over the place,” he told the crowd at a dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

yahoo.com)

I am sure with an idiot in charge of HHS , RFK,Jr, and Medicare under the watchful eye of that quack Oz this saga is far from over.

I will be watching and writing whenever something new hits the presses.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”