#Health care costs and insurance

[passengerpigeons]

becoming largely chill about most things. but i give myself permission to be mad about car infrastructure, car dependence, and cars flagrantly ignoring pedestrian right-of-way and generally endangering beings of flesh. because this is one of the few truly moral axis of this world

[stinkrascal]

my ears hurt :( 1 billion points hammer damage to the american healthcare system

[adamsvanrhijn]

i really need to do all of my elective care before moving to scotland because i am extremely not looking forward to having to jump through hoops for every little thing including potentially my maintenance medications......

[compareinpatientrehab]

How Much Does Inpatient Rehab Cost?

If you or a family member is looking into inpatient rehab, one of your main concerns might be the cost. Rehab costs vary widely based on the facility, the length of stay, and the services offered. Below is a breakdown of what you can expect based on different types of rehab centers:

Basic Inpatient Rehab

Basic inpatient rehab centers typically include standard treatment programs. Shared rooms and fewer luxuries are usually included here. Such programs are formulated with the minimal essentials to support recovery, rather than featuring added comforts. Such programs cost between $2,000 and $20,000 per month.

Mid-Range Inpatient Rehab

Mid-range rehab centers will offer a much more customized approach to treatment. They will typically include some form of individual therapy sessions and upgraded accommodations. This way, you receive a better level of care within a relatively affordable budget. Normally, a mid-range inpatient rehab option falls within the $10,000 to $30,000 per month price range.

Luxury Inpatient Rehab

Luxury inpatient rehabs are the top-tier institutions that offer personal quarters, good dining services, and special privileges such as spa treatments and access to personal trainers and calming views of nature. Luxury services do not come cheap and can cost as much as $30,000 to over $100,000 per month.

Factors Influencing Cost

Another factor that determines the total cost of rehabilitation is the duration of your stay. Most rehabilitation programs are 30 to 90 days long, but some may require longer stays depending on one's condition and goals for recovery.

Insurance and Financial Assistance

Most plans offer coverage for some kind of rehab, but the coverage is case-by-case, determined by what your plan is and if the place you want to go has a network affiliation. Be sure to call your insurance provider to know what their policies are and if that rehab center accepts your type of insurance.

The best rehab facilities offer sliding scale fees or financial aid based on the recipient's income and need for it, especially if they are uninsured or experiencing economic hardship. Ask the rehab center for a payment plan or any financial aid available.

Conclusion

Inpatient rehab charges may range from a few thousand dollars to over 100,000 dollars per month, all being dependent on the level of care and treatment amenities, but most of these are covered by insurance. It is always important to check this information before entering the program so that one will be aware of the resources that could be accessed in helping one afford the costs of such a facility.

[captn-lovelace]

told my new psychiatrist that while my chart says i have adhd, i don’t know if i actually have it bc it was diagnosed by a primary care physician. after 20 minutes psych said “don’t worry you have it” 💀💀💀

[perfektblau]

If 🔪 all those politicians, ceos, and those who perpetuate the nightmare American healthcare system that only exists to prey and profit off from human lives would stop it, I'd do it even if it means cutting down half of my lifespan or going to purgatory. If it means people won't have to suffer anymore, I would.

[magic-is-something-we-create]

your periodic reminder that im trans and everything ive ever made has been done with the hopes to showcase the beauty and power and glory that being trans is.

this is also your periodic reminder that im queer and everything ive ever made has been done with the hopes to showcase the beauty and power and glory that being queer is.

this is also your periodic reminder that im ace and everything ive ever made has been done with the hopes to showcase the beauty and power and glory that being ace is.

[unexpectedyarns]

USAmerican Health Care Costs

2 days, no intensive care, critical care, or surgery.

[vydumaj]

both my mom and my sister really need to contact hospitals rn and it’s stressing me outttt

[bj-freeplay]

Also! Let’s be clear! Folks HATE our insurance here. Which- like- the world is now aware of considering recent events. It’s not like Americans enjoy the system or are entirely complacent about it. It’s just been so engrained into our society over the decades ppl don’t know *what* to do here.

Universal health care is scary to folks partially bc they’re misinformed over the value of our drugs and medical procedures for sure; but a lot of ppl don’t like the idea of long wait times that come with systems like the NHS over in England. Many folks I’ve talked to over the years are incredibly thankful for how specialized their care can be with privatized health care and think the idea of Universal will remove their ability to have options. It’s a very “all or nothing” conversation over here, which is not a likely way we would go about transitioning. It’s hard to communicate that Universal Health care will not remove privatized health care here. And having that divide will not have earth shattering taxes for those who rely on it even if you don’t.

It’s not dissimilar to how our university tuition problem has become what it is either. We’re a very individualist nation, and it’s not uncommon to hear the argument of “I had to earn my life so so should you” when speaking about abusive structures of power. This mindset has been confidently verbalized inside Congress as an argument against lower tuition rates and cancelling student debt. So how do you argue for the best interests of the general population against folks who think like that? They’re aware it’d be a net positive, but think there’s some arbitrary way it has to be earned by an individual with no empathy toward difference in life circumstances.

Insurance stealing our lives is a big part of our culture struggle here. Health care is just one massive aspect of that, but it’s not the only one abusing its power. When it’s so normal in so many aspects of your life it’s easy to become blind to the fact that these systems that are robbing you blind, not actually providing a service that’s goal is to actually help you, are not some inevitable option.

A lot of us also have a mistrust to the ways in which our taxes are used too. Which Really doesn’t help. Government funding for our education is placed in horrifying locations that honestly feel like blatant abuses of powers. Such as transporting a single portable building in my district would have cost 10 million dollars. Just to move it down the street for a different local school, less than a mile away. Why? Bc the board refuses to use any other transportation company than one, blatantly monopolizing the market and allowing them to up charge to what I would consider an illegal degree. All while teachers are making dirt off the exact same tax dollar being allocated through the department of education. Ppl don’t trust our government funding that comes through our tax dollars, sometimes for very good reason. So when you’re trying to argue that it CAN actually help people sometimes it feels like a herculean undertaking. 

All this mistrust, corruption, and misinformation make for a very bad cocktail. And the cocktail you’re trying to convince them to drink looks remarkably similar in ways it’s hard to avoid.

Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks I’ve known who’re against single-payer, it’s not even funny…

[boreal-sea]

Look.

I have made you a chart. A very simple chart.

People say "You have to draw the line somewhere, and Biden has crossed it-" and my response is "Trump has crossed way more lines than Biden".

These categories are based off of actual policy enacted by both of these men while they were in office.

If the ONLY LINE YOU CARE ABOUT is line 12, you have an incredible amount of privilege, AND YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS. You obviously have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency, and you do not give a fuck if a ceasefire actually occurs. You are obviously fine if your queer, disabled, and marginalized loved ones are hurt. You clearly don't care about the status of American democracy, which Trump has openly stated he plans to destroy on day 1 he is in office.

EDIT:

Ok fine, I spent 3 hours compiling sources for all of these, you can find that below the cut.

I'll give at least one link per subject area. There are of course many more sources to be read on these subject areas and no post could possibly give someone a full education on these subjects.

Biden and trans rights: https://www.hrc.org/resources/president-bidens-pro-lgbtq-timeline

Trump and trans rights: https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/trump-on-lgbtq-rights-rolling-back-protections-and-criminalizing-gender-nonconformity

The two sources above show how Biden has done a lot of work to promote trans rights, and how Trump did a lot of work to hurt trans rights.

Biden on abortion access: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/politics/what-is-in-biden-abortion-executive-order/index.html

Trump on abortion access: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-trump-republican-presidential-election-2024-585faf025a1416d13d2fbc23da8d8637

Biden openly supports access to abortion and has taken steps to protect those rights at a federal level even after Roe v Wade was overturned. Trump, on the other hand, was the man who appointed the judges who helped overturn Roe v Wade and he openly brags about how proud he is of that decision. He also states that he believes individual states should have the final say in whether or not abortion is legal, and that he trusts them to "do the right thing", meaning he supports stronger abortion bans.

Biden on environmental reform: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/10/07/fact-sheet-president-biden-restores-protections-for-three-national-monuments-and-renews-american-leadership-to-steward-lands-waters-and-cultural-resources/

Trump on environmental reform: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html

Biden has made major steps forward for environmental reform. He has restored protections that Trump rolled back. He has enacted many executive orders and more to promote environmental protections, including rejoining the Paris Accords, which Trump withdrew the USA from. Trump is also well known for spreading conspiracy theories and lies about global climate change, calling it a "Chinese hoax".

Biden on healthcare and prescription reform: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/06/09/biden-administration-announces-savings-43-prescription-drugs-part-cost-saving-measures-president-bidens-inflation-reduction-act.html

Trump on healthcare reform: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/07/politics/obamacare-health-insurance-ending-trump/index.html

I'm rolling healthcare and prescriptions and vaccines and public health all into one category here since they are related. Biden has lowered drug costs, expanded access to medicaid, and ACA enrollment has risen during his presidency. He has also made it so medical debt no longer applies to a person's credit score. He signed many executive orders during his first few weeks in office in order to get a handle on Trump's grievous mishandling of the COVID pandemic. Trump also wants to end the ACA. Trump is well known for refusing to wear a mask during the pandemic, encouraging the use of hydroxylchloroquine to "treat" COVID, and being openly anti-vaxx.

Biden on student loan forgiveness: https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/biden-harris-administration-announces-additional-77-billion-approved-student-debt-relief-160000-borrowers

Trump on student loan forgiveness: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2024/06/20/trump-knocks-bidens-vile-student-loan-forgiveness-plans-suggests-reversal/

Trump wants to reverse the student loan forgiveness plans Biden has enacted. Biden has already forgiven billions of dollars in loans and continues to work towards forgiving more.

Infrastructure funding:

I'm putting these links next together because they are all about infrastructure.

In general, Trump's "achievements" for infrastructure were to destroy environmental protections to speed up projects. Many of his plans were ineffective due to the fact that he did not clearly outline where the money was going to come from, and he was unwilling to raise taxes to pay for the projects. He was unable (and unwilling) to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill during his 4 years in office. He did sign a few disaster relief bills. He did not enthusiastically promote renewable energy infrastructure. He created "Infrastructure Weeks" that the federal government then failed to fund. Trump did not do nothing for infrastructure, but his no-tax stance and his dislike for renewable energy means the contributions he made to American infrastructure were not as much as he claimed they were, nor as much as they could have been. Basically, he made a lot of promises, and delivered on very few of them. He is not "against" infrastructure, but he's certainly against funding it.

Biden was able to pass that bipartisan bill after taking office. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan that Trump tried to prevent from passing during Biden's term contains concrete funding sources and step by step plans to rebuild America's infrastructure. If you want to read the plan, you can find it here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/build/guidebook/. Biden has done far more for American infrastructure than Trump did, most notably by actually getting the bipartisan bill through congress.

Biden on Racial Equity: https://www.npr.org/sections/president-biden-takes-office/2021/01/26/960725707/biden-aims-to-advance-racial-equity-with-executive-actions

Trump on Racial Equity: https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/trump-reverse-racism-civil-rights https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-37230916

Trump's racist policies are loud and clear for everyone to hear. We all heard him call Mexicans "Drug dealers, criminals, rapists". We all watched as he enacted travel bans on people from majority-Muslim nations. Biden, on the other hand, has done quite a lot during his term to attempt to reconcile racism in this country, including reversing Trump's "Muslim ban" the first day he was in office.

Biden on DEI: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/06/25/executive-order-on-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-accessibility-in-the-federal-workforce/

Trump on DEI: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-tried-to-crush-the-dei-revolution-heres-how-he-might-finish-the-job/ar-BB1jg3gz

Biden supports DEI and has signed executive orders and passed laws that support DEI on the federal level. Trump absolutely hates DEI and wants to eradicate it.

Biden on criminal justice reform: https://time.com/6155084/biden-criminal-justice-reform/

Trump on criminal justice reform: https://www.vox.com/2020-presidential-election/21418911/donald-trump-crime-criminal-justice-policy-record https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/05/trumps-extreme-plans-crime/678502/

From pardons for non-violent marijuana convictions to reducing the federal government's reliance on private prisons, Biden has done a lot in four years to reform our criminal justice system on the federal level. Meanwhile, Trump has described himself as "tough on crime". He advocates for more policing, including "stop and frisk" activities. Ironically it's actually quite difficult to find sources about what Trump thinks about crime, because almost all of the search results are about his own crimes.

Biden on military support for Israel: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/biden-obama-divide-closely-support-israel-rcna127107

Trump on military support for Israel: https://www.vox.com/politics/353037/trump-gaza-israel-protests-biden-election-2024

Biden supports Israel financially and militarily and promotes holding Israel close. So did Trump. Trump was also very pro-Israel during his time in office and even moved the embassy to Jerusalem and declared Jerusalem the capitol of Israel, a move that inflamed attitudes in the region.

Biden on a ceasefire: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/06/05/gaza-israel-hamas-cease-fire-plan-biden/73967659007/

Trump on a ceasefire: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-gaza-finish-problem-rcna141905

Trump has tried to be quiet on the issue but recently said he wants Israel to "finish the problem". He of course claims he could have prevented the whole problem. Trump also openly stated after Oct 7th that he would bar immigrants who support Hamas from the country and send in officers to American protests to arrest anyone supporting Hamas.

Biden meanwhile has been quietly urging Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal for months, including the most recent announcement earlier in June, though it seems as though that deal has finally fallen through as well.

[snorfbin]

god i hope all the health insurance horror stories come to an end with brian thompson

[padawanduck]

my work health insurance is offering a five HUNDRED dollar ER copay what the fuck

[jcmarchi]

Study: Hospice care provides major Medicare savings

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/study-hospice-care-provides-major-medicare-savings/

Study: Hospice care provides major Medicare savings

Hospice care aims to provide a health care alternative for people nearing the end of life by sparing them unwanted medical procedures and focusing on the patient’s comfort. A new study co-authored by MIT scholars shows hospice also has a clear fiscal benefit: It generates substantial savings for the U.S. Medicare system.

The study examines the growth of for-profit hospice providers, who receive reimbursements from Medicare, and evaluates the cost of caring for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). The research finds that for patients using for-profit hospice providers, there is about a $29,000 savings to Medicare over the first five years after someone is diagnosed with ADRD.

“Hospice is saving Medicare a lot of money,” says Jonathan Gruber, an MIT health care economist and co-author of a paper detailing the study’s findings. “Those are big numbers.”

In recent decades, hospice care has grown substantially. That growth has been accompanied by concerns that for-profit hospice organizations, in particular, might be overly aggressive in pursuing patients. There have also been instances of fraud by organizations in the field. And yet, the study shows that the overall dynamics of hospice are the intended ones: People are indeed receiving palliative-type care, based around comfort rather than elaborate medical procedures, at less cost.

“What we found is that hospice basically operates as advertised,” adds Gruber, the Ford Professor of Economics at MIT. “It does not extend lives on aggregate, and it does save money.”

The paper, “Dying or Lying? For-Profit Hospices and End of Life Care,” appears in the American Economic Review. The co-authors are Gruber, who is also head of MIT’s Department of Economics; David Howard, a professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University; Jetson Leder-Luis PhD ’20, an assistant professor at Boston University; and Theodore Caputi, a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Economics.

Charting what more hospice access means

Hospice care in the U.S. dates to at least the 1970s. Patients opt out of their existing medical network and receive nursing care where they live, either at home or in care facilities. That care is oriented around reducing suffering and pain, rather than attempting to eliminate underlying causes. Generally, hospice patients are expected to have six months or less to live. Most Medicare funding goes to private contractors supplying medical care, and in the 1980s the federal government started using Medicare to reimburse the medical expenses from hospice as well.

While the number of nonprofit hospice providers in the U.S. has remained fairly consistent, the number of for-profit hospice organizations grew fivefold between 2000 and 2019. Medicare payments for hospice care are now about $20 billion annually, up from $2.5 billion in 1999. People diagnosed with ADRD now make up 38 percent of hospice patients.

Still, Gruber considers the topic of hospice care relatively under-covered by analysts. To conduct the study, the team examined over 10 million patients from 1999 through 2019. The researchers used the growth of for-profit hospice providers to compare the effects of being enrolled in non-profit hospice care, for-profit hospice care, or staying in the larger medical system.

That means the scholars were not only evaluating hospice patients; by evaluating the larger population in a given area where and when for-profit hospice firms opened their doors, they could see what difference greater access to hospice care made. For instance, having a new for-profit hospice open locally is associated with a roughly 2 percentage point increase in for-profit hospice admissions in following years.

“We’re able to use this methodology to [analyze] if these patients would otherwise have not gone to hospice or would have gone to a nonprofit hospice,” Gruber says.

The method also allows the scholars to estimate the substantial cost savings. And it shows that enrolling in hospice increased the five-year post-diagnosis mortality rate of ADRD patients by 8.6 percentage points, from a baseline of 66.6 percent. Entering into hospice care — which is a reversible decision — means foregoing life-extending surgeries, for instance, if people believe such procedures are no longer desirable for them.

Rethinking the cap

By providing care without more expensive medical procedures, it is understandable that hospice reduces overall medical costs. Still, given that Medicare reimburses hospice organizations, one ongoing policy concern is that hospice providers might aggressively recruit a larger percentage of patients who end up living longer than six additional months. In this way hospice providers might unduly boost their revenues and put more pressure on the Medicare budget.

To counteract this, Medicare rules include a roughly $29,205 cap on per-patient reimbursements, as of 2019. Most patients die relatively soon after entering hospice care; some will outlive the six-month expectation significantly. But hospice organizations cannot exceed that average.

However, the study also suggests the cap is a suboptimal approach. In 2018, 15.5 percent of hospice patients were being discharged from hospice care while still alive, due to the cap limiting hospice capacity. As the paper notes, “patients in hospices facing cap pressure are more likely to be discharged from hospice alive and experience higher mortality rates.”

As Gruber notes, the spending cap is partly a fraud-fighting tool. And yet the cap clearly has other, unintended consquences on patients and their medical choices, crowding some out of the hospice system.

“The cap may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” Gruber says. “The government has more focused tools to fight fraud. Using the cap for that is a blunt instrument.”

As long as people are informed about hospice and the medical trajectory it puts them on, then, hospice care appears to be providing a valued service at less expense than other approaches to end-of-life care.

“The holy grail in health care is things that improve quality and save money,” Gruber says. “And with hospice, there are surveys saying people like it. And it certainly saves money, and there’s no evidence it’s doing harm [to patients]. We talk about how we struggle to deal with health care costs in this country, so this seems like what we want.”

The research was supported in part by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. 

[passiveagreeable]

It’s funny when worries bubble to the surface for like objectively no reason.

I forgot to enroll in health insurance through my job. Whether I qualify is debatable because I don’t work full time hours, though I’m supposed to. And it was gonna be really expensive, so I was thinking to waive coverage anyway but the documents were due yesterday. And no matter how many times I put into my calendar to alert me over the past five days. I somehow still forgot. And here we are.

To be clear. I have been completely uninsured for more than a couple years, and prior to that I had non insurance that paid for an annual physical and nothing else. And that’s going back like at least five more years. I haven’t had what could legally be called health insurance since literally I was in high school.

And for the most part, I’ve been fine about it. Not in like an ‘I’m invincible’ kind of way but you just have to shrug your shoulders about some of these things. And while I can pinpoint parts of my daily life that a doctor might call a medical issue, I’ve dealt with them for years and I just ignore them.

So why now? I ask myself that.

I don’t really know. Maybe it was the rattlesnake anti venom debacle? Or earlier in the summer when I got what seemed like conjunctivitis but probably wasn’t because eventually it went away on its own. Or when my mom’s finger got shut in the car window and she had to get four stitches. Perhaps it’s that my job involves hours inside a moving vehicle, which probably is a more likely location to experience bodily harm than just being in a store or office.

Anyway. Cheers to another year of being uninsured. Let’s hope I don’t get the flu or idk, melanoma.

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #39

October 18-25 2024.

President Biden issued the first presidential apology on behalf of the federal government to America's Native American population for the Indian boarding school policy. For 150 years the federal government operated a system of schools which aimed to destroy Native culture through the forced assimilation of native children. At these schools students faced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and close to 1,000 died. The Biden-Harris Administration has been historic for Native and Tribal rights. From the appointment of the first ever Native American cabinet member, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to the investment of $46 billion dollars on tribal land, to 200 new co-stewardship agreements. The last 4 years have seen a historic investment in and expansion of tribal rights.

The Biden-Harris Administration proposed a new rule which would make contraceptive medication (the pill) free over the counter with most Insurance. The new rule would ban cost sharing for contraception products, including the pill, condoms, and emergency contraception. On top of over the counter medications, the new rule will also strength protections for prescribed contraception without cost sharing as well.

The EPA announced its finalized rule strengthening standards for lead paint dust in pre-1978 housing and child care facilities. There is no safe level of exposure to lead particularly for children who can suffer long term developmental consequences from lead exposure. The new standards set the lowest level of lead particle that can be identified by a lab as the standard for lead abatement. It's estimated 31 million homes built before the ban on lead paint in 1978 have lead paint and 3.8 million of those have one or more children under the age of 6. The new rule will mean 1.2 million fewer people, including over 300,000 children will not be exposed to lead particles every year. This comes after the Biden-Harris Administration announced its goal to remove and replace all lead pipes in America by the end of the decade.

The Department of Transportation announced a $50 million dollar fine against American Airlines for its treatment of disabled passengers and their wheelchairs. The fine stems from a number of incidences of humiliating and unfair treatment of passages between 2019 and 2023, as well as video documented evidence of mishandling wheelchairs and damaging them. Half the fine will go to replacing such damaged wheelchairs. The Biden administration has leveled a historic number of fines against the airlines ($225 million) for their failures. It also published a Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, passed a new rule accessible lavatories on aircraft, and is working on a rule to require airlines to replace lost or damaged wheelchairs with equal equipment at once.

The Department of Energy announced $430 million dollars to help boost domestic clean energy manufacturing in former coal communities. This invests in projects in 15 different communities, in places like Texas, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan. The plan will bring about 1,900 new jobs in communities struggling with the loss of coal. Projects include making insulation out of recycled cardboard, low carbon cement production, and industrial fiber hemp processing.

The Department of Transportation announced $4.2 billion in new infrastructure investment. The money will go to 44 projects across the country. For example the MBTA will get $400 million to replace the 92 year old Draw 1 bridge and renovate North Station.

The Department of Transportation announced nearly $200 million to replace aging natural gas pipes. Leaking gas lines represent a serious public health risk and also cost costumers. Planned replacements in Georgia and North Carolina for example will save the average costumer there over $900 on their gas bill a year. Replacing leaking lines will also remove 1,000 metric tons of methane pollution, annually.

The Department of the Interior announced $244 million to address legacy pollution in Pennsylvania coal country. This comes on top of $400 million invested earlier this year. This investment will help close dangerous mine shafts, reclaim unstable slopes, improve water quality by treating acid mine drainage, and restore water supplies damaged by mining.

Data shows that President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (passed with Vice-President Harris' tie breaking vote) has saved seniors $1 billion dollars on out-of-pocket drug costs. Seniors with certain high priced drugs saw their yearly out of pocket costs capped at $3,500 for 2024. In 2024 all seniors using Medicare Part D will see their out of pocket costs capped at $2,000 for the year. It's estimated if the $2,000 cap had been in effect this year 4.6 million seniors would have hit it by June and not have had to pay any more for medication for the rest of the year.

The Department of Education announced a new proposed rule to bring student debt relief for 8 million struggling borrowers. The Biden-Harris Administration has managed despite road blocks from Republicans in Congress, the courts and law suits from Republican states to bring student loan forgiveness to 5 million Americans so far through different programs. This latest rule would take into account many financial hardships faced by people to determine if they qualify to have their student loans forgiven. The final rule cannot be finalized before 2025 meaning its fate will be decided at the election.

The Department of Agriculture announced $1.5 billion in 92 partner-driven conservation projects. These projects aim at making farming more susceptible and environmental friendly, 16 projects are about water conservation in the West, 6 support use of innovative technologies to reduce enteric methane emissions in livestock. $100 million has been earmarked for Tribal-led projects.