The blockbuster weight-loss drugs that many households could not afford are getting markedly cheaper under a pricing arrangement between the federal government and the two companies that make them. Starting-dose versions of drugs like Wegovy, Zepbound, and the Ozempic class are being sold for about $350 a month in cash, and Medicare enrollees are looking…

For most older Americans, the hospital and doctors they trust are only “in network” because of the specific Medicare plan in their wallet. That link is fraying. A running industry tally now counts 25 health systems that have dropped, ended, or narrowed their Medicare Advantage contracts so far in 2026, and the number keeps climbing…

One of the most valuable Medicare benefits is also one of the most overlooked: a program called Extra Help that can erase most of what lower-income enrollees pay for prescription drugs. It can wipe out the Part D drug-plan premium and deductible and cut copays to a few dollars per prescription. Yet many people who…

A Trump executive order is pushing to tie what Medicare pays for certain prescription drugs to the lower prices that other wealthy countries pay for the same medicines. The idea, often called “most favored nation” pricing, is that the United States should not pay several times what Germany or Canada pays for an identical drug.…

The standard Medicare Part B premium, which most beneficiaries have deducted straight from their Social Security checks, is projected to rise to about $209.50 a month in 2027. That is an estimate drawn from the Medicare trustees’ own numbers, not the official rate — that lands in November — but it gives retirees a realistic…

Humana has told investors it will pull out of Medicare Advantage plans that cover roughly 600,000 members for the 2027 plan year, and it expects to move only about four in ten of those people into another plan it still sells. For everyone else, the plan they use today simply will not exist in January,…

The document at the center of this change is an ordinary one: a signed written order that has to reach the equipment supplier before the item is delivered, supported by a face-to-face visit with the treating practitioner in the six months before that order was written. On October 28, 2026, twenty-two more equipment codes come…

In May, Providence Health Plan told its markets it would exit most of its insurance business for 2027 and carved out a single exception. The Oregon-based insurer said it was negotiating with an unnamed national carrier to keep its Medicare Advantage line running under new ownership, so that members could stay covered and, in most…

Six hundred thousand is the figure Humana attached to its 2027 Medicare Advantage plan exits, roughly 8 percent of the nearly 7.2 million people it covers in the program. A second number sits underneath it and has drawn far less attention. The company has told investors it anticipates recapturing roughly 40 percent of that group…

No plan is being canceled here, and no benefit is changing. What is being removed is the payment an insurance agent earns for enrolling someone. Aetna has told the third-party marketing organizations that supply its sales force that it will pay agents and brokers nothing on 123 of its Medicare Advantage plans for the 2027…