Latest News On KFF Health News & PolitiFact HealthCheck

Latest California Healthline Stories

Republicans Vow Not to Cut Veterans’ Benefits. But the Legislation Suggests Otherwise.

Sparing veterans and defense spending, as Republicans promise, would be extremely difficult, requiring cuts of more than 20% in other parts of the budget. The Republicans’ Limit, Save, Grow Act already proposes a $2 billion cut to the Department of Veterans Affairs by taking back unspent covid relief funding.

Proposed Medicare Advantage Changes Cannot Accurately Be Called ‘Cuts,’ Experts Say

CMS advanced two proposed changes that could affect Medicare Advantage plans. One would allow the government to recover past overpayments. As a result, it could reduce those insurers’ profits, leading them to increase enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs or reduce benefits. But it’s inaccurate to characterize the changes as “cuts.”

Florida Gov. DeSantis Falsely Claims Bivalent Booster Boosts Chances of Covid Infection

Experts say the Florida governor’s conclusion could not be drawn from the study he cited, adding that the research focused on health care workers, who are likelier to be exposed to covid and more likely to be vaccinated. Those findings should not be applied to the general public.

Ad Goes Too Far With Claim That Joe Biden Promotes Surgery for Trans Teens

Even some medical experts who are skeptical of gender-affirming care say the White House is not promoting breast removal and genital surgery for teens. But that’s not what an ad, funded by a group led by a former adviser to President Donald Trump, would have you believe.

No, the Senate-Passed Reconciliation Bill Won’t Strip $300 Billion From Medicare

Under the Medicare drug negotiations provisions in the reconciliation bill, the federal government would see its outlays reduced by about $300 billion. That reduction wouldn’t result from cuts in benefits. Instead, Medicare would be empowered to leverage its market power to pay lower prices for certain drugs.

Ad Targeting Manchin and AARP Mischaracterizes Medicare Drug-Price Negotiations

The advocacy group American Commitment said empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices would raid it of billions of dollars. Drug pricing experts say that that’s not the case and that such policies would instead reduce costs for the Medicare program and seniors.