Main Street Dollars

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Of the 15 drugs Medicare negotiated new prices for in its second round of talks, none got a bigger percentage discount than Janumet. Merck has agreed to sell the diabetes pill to Medicare drug plans for $80 for a 30-day supply starting January 1, 2027, down from a $526 list price in 2024. That’s an…

The negotiated Medicare price for the bowel drug Linzess is $136 a month, against a $539 list price

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Linzess is not a specialty cancer drug or a rare-disease treatment. It’s a capsule millions of Americans with chronic constipation or irritable bowel syndrome take every day, and it’s now one of the 15 drugs Medicare has negotiated a lower price for. Starting January 1, 2027, a Medicare drug plan will pay AbbVie $136 for…

A month of the prostate cancer drug Xtandi will cost a Medicare drug plan $7,004 in January instead of $13,480

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Astellas Pharma has agreed to sell Xtandi, one of the most widely used prostate cancer drugs on the market, to Medicare drug plans for $7,004 for a 30-day supply starting in January 2027. That’s down from the $13,480 the same supply cost at list price in 2024, a discount of 48 percent. The new number…

The fifteen drugs Medicare negotiated for next year will cost it 44 percent less, a difference of about $12 billion

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Medicare has finished bargaining over the price of 15 widely used prescription drugs, and the government now has a number to show for it. If the newly agreed-upon prices had applied during 2024, Medicare would have spent an estimated $12 billion less on those drugs, a 44 percent cut in net spending. The prices themselves…

A proposed federal rule would limit the taxes states charge hospitals to fund Medicaid, worth $246 billion over ten years

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed a rule that would tighten how much states can tax hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers to help pay for Medicaid. CMS estimates the change would cut federal Medicaid spending by roughly $246 billion over the next ten years, mostly by closing financing arrangements…

The letter telling a member their Medicare Advantage plan is ending has to arrive at least 90 days before it does

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A federal rule most people never hear about until it affects them sets a hard floor on how much warning a Medicare Advantage member gets before their plan disappears. If an insurer decides not to renew its Medicare Advantage contract for the coming year, it cannot simply drop enrollees with a short heads-up. The notice…

Insurers actually paid $6.5 million of the $1.3 billion a shell equipment company billed Medicare

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Prosecutors say a Pennsylvania medical-equipment company submitted at least $1.3 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare and other insurers over five months in 2025, but the money that actually left those insurers’ accounts was a fraction of that: about $6.5 million. The gap between the number in the indictment and the number that got paid…

Rural Alaska’s smallest food stamp payment is $49, twice the lower 48’s

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When USDA sets next year’s food stamp numbers, most of the attention goes to the maximum a household can get. But the program also has a floor, and starting October 1, 2026, that floor is not the same everywhere. In the 48 states and Washington, D.C., the smallest monthly SNAP payment a one- or two-person…

The largest food stamp household the government pays is capped at $3,887 a month no matter its size

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has told every state SNAP office exactly what a household can receive starting October 1, 2026, and for the biggest households, the number stops climbing. A household of 18 people gets the same monthly maximum as a household of 30: $3,887, loaded onto an EBT card whether it’s feeding two…

Medicaid’s new work rule gives a person 30 days to fix a missed report before the coverage ends

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