This week, the Medicare Rights Center (Medicare Rights) addressed its top administrative policy priorities in letters to President-elect Trump and Congressional leadership. Medicare Rights is a national, nonprofit organization that works to ensure access to affordable health care for older adults and people with disabilities through counseling and advocacy, educational programs, and policy initiatives.

This week, the Urban Institute (the Institute) released a brief discussing the impact of enacting the same partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) advanced by Congressional Republicans in 2016. This repeal (H.R. 3762), using the legislative reconciliation tool, was vetoed by President Obama, but it is widely believed that President-Elect Trump would be likely to sign an identical bill.

A recent blog post on the Center on Budget Policy Priorities (CBPP) addresses a common falsehood repeated by some lawmakers about the financial footing of Medicare. Unfortunately, some members of Congress continue to claim that Medicare won’t be there for future generations because it’s going bankrupt. According to CBPP, this falsehood has been debunked before—Medicare is not running out of money.

Several years ago, Republican leaders in Congress unveiled proposals to make sweeping changes to the health care system, including to Medicare. Those plans—ultimately designed to create Medicare cost savings for the federal government— include raising the age of Medicare eligibility, privatizing the Medicare program through a premium support model, increasing cost sharing for people with Medicare, and more.

After the recent election, these ideas reemerged, through comments by members of Congress and the incoming Administration. When these proposals were originally introduced, we said that they were not the right solutions, and we still believe they represent the wrong path for sustaining the future of the Medicare program.

This week, the Medicare Rights Center submitted a response to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) request for comment on Enhancements to the Star Ratings for 2018 and Beyond in advance of the draft 2018 Call Letter. The proposed changes are intended to tweak the measures and methodology of the star rating system to better capture performance, including changes to the way audit and enforcement actions affect star rating results.

In January, I’ll blow out the candles on my 65th birthday cake. A family member recently reminded me that I

Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the Medicare Part B premiums for 2017. Starting January 1, most people with Medicare will see a small increase in their Part B premium, from $104.90 to an average of $109.00 per month. But about 30 percent of people covered by Medicare will see a minimum Part B premium of $134.00, a 10 percent increase from the minimum 2016 premium of $121.80.

You may be reading news reports about how some members of Congress want to privatize Medicare. By no means is this new news, but this week’s election results brought about renewed interest in these plans. In years past, proposals to privatize Medicare—commonly known as premium support—relied on vouchers that people with Medicare would receive from the federal government to purchase private health plans. Past proposals had important differences: some introduce vouchers for future beneficiaries, some preserve Traditional Medicare as an option, some include defined benefits and consumer protections, etc.

This week, the Medicare Rights Center submitted a letter of strong support for the Medicare Affordability and Enrollment Act of 2016. Introduced this fall, this bill would cap beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket expenses in Traditional Medicare; eliminate coverage gaps associated with Part B enrollment mistakes; reduce cost-sharing for low-income beneficiaries; increase eligibility for income-dependent programs; and modernize the Medicare enrollment system to facilitate easier enrollment, begin coverage earlier and reduce arbitrary late-enrollment penalties that today are paid for a lifetime.