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The decision represents a victory for cancer patients, researchers and geneticists who claimed that a single company’s patent raised costs, restricted research and sometimes forced women to have breasts or ovaries removed without sufficient facts or second opinions.

But the court held out a lifeline to Myriad Genetics, the company with an exclusive patent on the isolated form of genes that can foretell an increased genetic risk of cancer. The justices said it can patent a type of synthesized DNA that goes beyond extracting the genes from the body.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the decision for a unanimous court. “Myriad did not create anything,” Thomas said. “To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.” Click here to read the full article online.

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But what will enrollees actually get for that monthly charge?
States are starting to roll out details about the exchanges, providing a look at just how affordable coverage under the Affordable Care Act will be. Some potential participants may be surprised at the figures: $2,000 deductibles, $45 primary care visit co-pays, and $250 emergency room tabs.

Those are just some of the charges enrollees will incur in a silver-level plan in California, which recently unveiled an overview of the benefits and charges associated with its exchange. That’s on top of the $321 average monthly premium.

For some, this will be great news since it will allow them to see the doctor without breaking the bank. But others may not want to shell out a few thousand bucks in addition to a monthly premium.

“The hardest question is will it be a good deal and will consumers be able to afford it,” said Marian Mulkey, director of the health reform initiative at the California Healthcare Foundation. “The jury is still out. It depends on their circumstances.” Click here to read the full article online.

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Social Security Benefits Not Prorated
Tom Margenau
2013-06-12

Q: It has always puzzled me why Social Security takes back a person’s Social Security check for the month he or she dies. My aunt recently died. And as her executor, I was counting on using her last Social Security check to pay off some of her bills. But the government took that money away from me. Can you explain that?

A: Simply put, the law has always said that you must meet all the eligibility requirements for a Social Security benefit for an entire month to be eligible for a payment for that month. That is why Social Security benefits are paid a month in arrears (the May check is paid in June, the June check in July, etc.); to make sure a person is eligible for a benefit for the prior month.

Obviously, one of the eligibility rules is that a person be alive. And again, you must be alive for the entire month to get the benefit for that month. So, for example, if your aunt died in May, whether it might have been May 2nd or May 30, then she (and her estate) is not due the May Social Security check. In other words, the check that comes in June (the May benefit) must be returned.

Another way to put that is this: Social Security checks are not prorated. They never have been and probably never will be. But what most people don’t think about is the flip side of that coin. The law does allow a person to get their first Social Security check for the month they are due benefits, even though they might not be eligible until later in the month. For example, my brother was born on June 22. He took his benefits at age 65. And he got his first Social Security check for the entire month of June, even though he was only 65 for 8 days of the month.

Think of it this way: The law presumes you’d rather have that extra benefit up front while you are alive; as opposed to your family getting the proceeds of your last check after you are dead!

Q: When my father died about five years ago, my mother got the $255 burial benefit from Social Security. About a month ago, my father-in-law died. But his wife, my mother-in-law, who has been in a nursing home for about 10 years, never got any burial money. We asked Social Security about that, and they said we are not due anything. When we asked why, all they told us is, “It’s the law.” Were they correct?

A: Well, their answer was technically correct. But they certainly could have done a better job of explaining the law.

Before I do that, I must clarify one misconception about this one-time $255 death benefit. It is not, and never was intended to be, a “burial benefit.” And good thing it isn’t because $255 would barely cover the cost of flowers at most funerals today!

This death benefit is a holdover from the very earliest days of the Social Security program. It started out as a means of refunding a small portion of the taxes a person paid into the Social Security system if he or she died before having a chance to collect monthly benefits. Over the years, that simple “refund” of taxes that was paid only to the family members of non-beneficiaries morphed into a death benefit payable to the family members of just about everyone.

The benefit amount was locked in at $255 about 40 years ago. Since then, it’s never gone up and has never gone down. Attempts are occasionally made to simply eliminate this almost worthless payment. But every time that happens, senior citizen groups inundate Congress with letters of protest and so the little death benefit remains in law.

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration did have the guts (although others would say the gall) to take on those seniors and they lobbied Congress to at least nibble away at the death benefit. They changed to law to say that the death benefit can be paid only to a surviving spouse WHO WAS LIVING WITH THE DECEASED AT THE TIME OF DEATH. Your mother-in-law was apparently not living with your father-in-law. (You said she was in a nursing home for the past decade.) So she isn’t due the money.

If I was in charge of all Social Security laws, I would either play Scrooge and simply eliminate the almost worthless benefit. Or, I would play Santa Claus and raise the death benefit to $2,500 to make it more meaningful. Also, I would pay it to the next of kin or to the person who is handling the deceased estate.

However, if I chose to increase the death benefit, I’d want to come up with some way to pay for the added costs to the program. I would do that by closing the current loophole that allows well-to-do retirees to collect dependent spousal benefits between age 66 and 70 before switching to their own augmented retirement benefits at age 70. This is the restricted application policy I have discussed many times in this column.

If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has the answer. Contact him at thomas.margenau@comcast.net. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

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ALSO INSIDE

• AARP’s Profit Machine
• Congressional Investigation
• $135MM IRS Settlement
• $2.8MM USPS Settlement
• Secret White House Operative
• Supports White House Gun Ban
• Supports White House Utility Rate Increase

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Obamacare’s Slush Fund Fuels a Broader Lobbying Controversy

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Tom Margenau

2013-05-29

Many people have asked me if I have written a book about Social Security. The answer is yes and no. The “yes” part of that answer alludes to the fact that I’ve had a Social Security book ready to go for many years now. The “no” part of the answer is that it hasn’t been published yet. And therein lies a story.

About ten years ago, I had signed on with a literary agent who was peddling my Social Security advice book to a variety of publishers. She finally found one that was interested in the book. The manuscript was approved by a series of editors, all of whom thought the book was marketable and had good potential. We just needed the approval of the head of the publishing house, and I would have been on my way to the best-seller lists!

But that publisher turned the book deal down. She said it was an excellent guidebook and great source of information about Social Security for people of all ages. “But,” she explained, “we all know that the Social Security program will soon be reformed, and those changes will instantly put your book out of date.”

Well, that was almost a decade ago. Social Security still hasn’t been reformed, and my manuscript is just gathering dust on my bookshelf.

I like to tell that story when people ask me about any imminent changes to Social Security. The message is: “Don’t hold your breath.” Everyone knows (well almost everyone knows) that Social Security needs to be reformed due to the financial burdens placed on the system by baby boomers that are turning into senior boomers in record numbers. Something like 10,000 boomers file for Social Security every day!

Policy planners and politicians have known about this for decades. And for years, people have been talking about Social Security reform. But no one does anything about it.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Liberals and Democrats deserve their share of the blame because they usually tend to put their heads in the sand and say: “What Social Security problem?”

Conservatives and Republicans deserve praise for being willing to discuss Social Security reform. But then they also deserve their share of the blame because they frequently propose outlandish and totally unworkable solutions to the problem (such as “privatizing” the program).

And the public at large deserves their share of the blame because they say they want reform, but they tend to vote otherwise. As I’ve pointed out many times in this column, if I ran for Congress on a platform of increasing the Social Security retirement age to 68, reducing future cost-of-living increases and raising the amount of income subject to Social Security tax (three viable solutions to Social Security’s long range fiscal problems); my opponent would run attack ads claiming that “a vote for Tom Margenau is a vote against seniors and working people”), and I would lose the election in a landslide.

And a recent episode illustrates the games politicians (on both sides of the aisle) play when it comes to Social Security.

As I alluded to earlier, Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for frequently refusing to put Social Security on the table. And Republicans should be praised for being willing to discuss “entitlement reform.”

As part of the ongoing budget negotiations between President Obama and the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, the president bucked the pressure he felt from some members of his own party and proposed a reduction in future cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

So you’d think that Republicans would have greeted that proposal with open arms. But what happened? Many of them immediately took to the airwaves and their Twitter accounts to blast the President for “trying to balance the budget on the backs of our poor deserving senior citizens.” And that was the same thing many liberal Democrats had said when the president proposed COLA reforms in the first place.

Do you see why Social Security reform can be so maddening and frustrating? Do you see why there is plenty of blame to go around for the lack of any meaningful changes? Do you see why Democrats should be ashamed of themselves? Do you see why Republicans should be ashamed of themselves? Do you see why the people/voters should be ashamed of themselves?

I guess everyone wants reform, but they want reforms that impact the other guy. They don’t want their Social Security checks reduced or their grandma’s benefits cut, but they wouldn’t mind if that other, less-deserving guy’s benefits are reduced. And they don’t want their Social Security taxes raised or their children’s taxes raised, but they wouldn’t mind if that other guy’s payroll taxes are raised.

I have written a fact sheet that offers weighted solutions to Social Security’s long-range financial problems. It not only lists proposed reforms, but it tells you how effective those reforms would be. In other words, it spells out how much of Social Security’s long-range deficit would be wiped out by each reform. I will email you an electronic copy of this free fact sheet if you send a request to thomas.margenau@comcast.net. (This is the same fact sheet I’ve offered in past columns, so people who have requested it before won’t need to get another one.)

If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has the answer. Contact him at thomas.margenau@comcast.net. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM

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A record 72,600,000 were enrolled in Medicaid for at least one month in fiscal 2012, up from 71,700,000 in fiscal 2011, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), which provides an annual report to Congress on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The 72,600,000 enrolled in Medicaid in the United States in 2012 was more than the 65,630,692 people who lived in France last year, according to data published by the Census Bureau, or the 63,047,162 people who lived in the United Kingdom.

In fact, if Medicaid was a country rather than a U.S. government program it would be the twentieth most populous nation in the world, ranking just ahead of Thailand, which had 67,091,089 people in 2012, and just behind the Congo, which had 73,599,190 people in 2012.

Funded by both the federal and state governments, Medicaid was created in 1965 by the same law that created Medicare. It is designed to provide health-care coverage to low-income Americans. Click here to read the full article online.

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A million bucks to operate the Senate barbershop. Another million to pay staffers at the Capitol Hill gift shops. Up to a thousand dollars per month, per person, to pay for vehicle leases for House members.

These are among the litany of expenses tied to the day-to-day operation of Capitol Hill — expenses that one senator says should be put under the microscope, now that other agencies are cutting back due to sequester.

“As the federal government manages sequestration, Congress should finally do what it has avoided doing for so long – identify fiscal priorities – and there is no better place to start than within Congress’s own halls,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., wrote in a letter this week to House Speaker John Boehner. “Congress must lead by example.”

Other arms of the government continue to trim back, after automatic budget cuts took effect in March. The latest example was at the Air Force Academy graduation Wednesday in Colorado. After the Air Force Thunderbirds were grounded due to sequester, grads were looking at the first ceremony in years to be denied a flyover. Thanks to a private donation of military planes and volunteer pilots, though, graduates were still treated to a flyover of World War II-era planes on Wednesday. Click here to read the full article online.

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A little-noticed part of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act channels some $12.5 billion into a vaguely defined “Prevention and Public Health Fund” over the next decade–and some of that money is going for everything from massage therapists who offer “calming techniques,” to groups advocating higher state and local taxes on tobacco and soda, and stricter zoning restrictions on fast-food restaurants.

The program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has raised alarms among congressional critics, who call it a “slush fund,” because the department can spend the money as it sees fit and without going through the congressional appropriations process. The sums involved are vast. By 2022, the department will be able to spend $2 billion per year at its sole discretion. In perpetuity.

What makes the Prevention and Public Health Fund controversial is its multibillion-dollar size, its unending nature (the fund never expires), and its vague spending mandate: any program designed “to improve health and help restrain the rate of, growth” of health-care costs. That can include anything from “pickleball” (a racquet sport) in Carteret County, N.C. to Zumba (a dance fitness program), kayaking and kickboxing in Waco, TX. Click here to read the full article online.

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