Medicare guarantees access to health care for 57 million older adults and people with disabilities, including hospital and physician care and prescription drugs. Understanding how Medicare is funded and how that funding is spent can improve policy decisions going forward.

This week, future funding for State Health Insurance Assistance Programs (SHIPs) is once again at stake. SHIPs provide unique one-on-one, in-person counseling to help people with Medicare understand their rights and navigate their coverage options. Despite their high value and low cost, SHIPs have been under threat for the past several years, but have survived through a combination of strong advocacy and diverse Congressional support.

This week, Medicare Rights Center submitted comments on ways to eliminate red tape and bureaucracy in the Medicare program that affect how people with Medicare can access their care and benefits. These comments were generated in response to the “Medicare Red Tape Relief Project,” a request from Representative Pat Tiberi, the Chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, for ideas to improve legislation or regulations to help “deliver relief from the regulations and mandates that impede innovation, drive up costs, and ultimately stand in the way of delivering better care for Medicare beneficiaries.”

In the aftermath of the Senate’s failure to pass major health care legislation and repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Kaiser Family Foundation released findings from a poll to understand what Americans think of the ACA, the attempts to repeal it so far, and next steps.

This week, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released a new issue brief examining a recent hot topic—areas with few or no insurers participating in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces. KFF compared these areas to places where there are very few or no Medicare Advantage (MA) plans offered this year to people with Medicare.

Nationwide, there are currently 19 counties—in Nevada, Indiana, and Ohio—that will have no ACA marketplace plans for sale in 2018. This number has been shrinking as insurers fill some of the gaps, so it is possible each of these counties will have coverage in 2018.

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks when it comes to Congress’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Last week, it appeared the Senate would not be able to pass any bills, or even bring any bills to the floor for a vote. This week, the Senate voted on several health care bills and each one was defeated. Here’s what you need to know:

After failing to bring their health care overhaul bill to a vote last month, leadership in theUS Senate released an updated version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) today. As in previous versions of this bill, the updated BCRA ends Medicaid as we know it. It maintains the previous cuts to the program, including an estimated $772 billion cuts over 10 years, with cuts reaching 35% within 20 years.

Last week, Senate leadership released the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 (BCRA). Drafted in secret by a panel of 13 Republican Senators, this bill only slightly amends the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which passed the House in May In fact, it still shares the same harmful policies–drastically cutting the Medicaid program and providing substantial tax breaks to the wealthy and to corporations. Plans to hold votes and floor debate this week were upended on Tuesday when Republican leaders discovered they lacked the 51 votes to meet the “Motion to Proceed” threshold—a key vote to allow the bill to come to the floor. This shortfall forced the Majority Leader to delay the initial votes until after the July 4th recess, which means that the Senate will not take up the bill until the week of July 10th at the earliest. In the meantime, negotiations continue in the Senate to try to woo members to support the bill.

The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) recently released an issue brief exploring how recent proposals to change Medicaid financing would affect Medicare. Eleven million people with Medicare—nearly 20%—also rely on Medicaid. Changes to one program can cause a ripple effect to the other. NCHC explains the significant pressure proposed Medicaid per-capita caps would place on Medicare, including the implications for future reform efforts.

Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed—by a very narrow margin—the American Health Care Act (AHCA) (H.R.1628) a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act as well as a major rewrite of the Medicaid program. Now the focus turns to the U.S. Senate. Though many Senators initially expressed deep concerns with the AHCA’s provisions, there are strong indications that the chamber is moving forward through a similarly rushed, secretive process and making only minor changes to the bill.