Retirees Are Worried About the Cost of Healthcare – and Who Can Blame Them?

Rising premiums, deductibles, co-pays, supplemental coverage and out of pocket costs hurt

Alicia H. Munnell 

The 10-percent increase in Medicare Part B premiums for 2026 has reignited concerns about how much Social Security and total income people will have after they cover their out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending.  Fortunately, my colleague Matt Rutledge has updated earlier research to answer precisely that question.

Even though retirees ages 65+ have Medicare, they still face considerable costs. In the case of Medicare Part A, which covers inpatient hospital care and is financed primarily by payroll taxes, beneficiaries face cost-sharing. Medicare Part B, which covers physician and outpatient hospital services, and Part D, which covers prescription drugs, are partly financed by premiums and include further cost-sharing. 

Because Medicare’s OOP costs are often substantial, many enrollees buy supplemental coverage, which may include additional premiums. Finally, many services, such as dental, vision, and hearing, are not covered by Medicare.

To identify total out-of-pocket healthcare costs, Matt used the 2018, 2020, and 2022 Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The sample included respondents who were ages 65+ and were receiving both Social Security and Medicare. In terms of expenditures, the HRS captures prescription drugs, special facilities, surgery, and medical visits to doctors, hospitals, and dentists. It also includes self-reported premiums paid for Medicare Part D, Medicare Advantage, and private supplemental plans. Medicare Part B income-related premiums were estimated based on the individual’s income. 

The central finding was the percentage of Social Security left after paying out-of-pocket health costs and how those results changed over the three surveys. As shown in Figure 1, the median percentage remaining in 2022 after medical OOP spending was 71 percent for Social Security benefits and 88 percent for total income. And these percentages were virtually unchanged over the three surveys.

In other words, OOP takes a big chuck of retirees’ resources, and the 10-percent increase in Medicare Part B premium suggests no relief on the horizon.

Corruptonomics

A memo to Democratic candidates on connecting Trump’s lousy economy to his corrupt regime.

Robert Reich

Friends,

Here’s a memo to Democrats as they begin campaigning in earnest for control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. (Please send to any candidates you care about.)

***

TO: Democratic candidates in the 2026 midterm elections

RE: Connect Trump’s lousy economy to his corrupt regime.

The purpose of this memo is to help you shape your midterm message around the crisis of affordability and Trump Republican corruption. I urge you to present these two issues as aspects of the same underlying problem: The economy is lousy for most Americans because Trump Republicans are enabling super-rich oligarchs to siphon off most of its gains while exerting increasing control over it. Their — and Trump’s — self-dealing is undermining trust and confidence in the U.S. economic system.

1. Republicans in the House and Senate have put oligarchs in charge of America.

House and Senate Republicans have allowed Trump’s war and his tariffs to drive up prices and Trump’s corruption to undermine faith in the economy. They’ve allowed Trump to gild his White House in gold leaf, plan a giant Arc de Trump, throw lavish parties, and build a Billionaire’s Ballroom — at a time when most Americans can’t afford gas or groceries.

They raided Medicaid to pay for Trump’s giant tax cut, whose benefits are going mostly to the rich. Legislative efforts advanced by House Republicans and signed into law have targeted up to $2 trillion in federal health care cuts, forcing millions of Americans off Medicaid rolls to pay for these tax reductions.

They refused to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies. This is causing average premiums to more than double and has already pushed 1.2 million people off coverage because they can’t afford it. Coverage losses are mounting as many who initially selected a plan or who were automatically reenrolled have to drop coverage.

Big Tech oligarchs — centi-billionaires Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, and other robber barons — paid for Trump’s 2024 election, his inauguration, and his ballroom and are major donors to Senate and House Republicans. They’ve shown up at Trump’s inauguration, White House dinners, and official visits to China.

In return, these oligarchs have been allowed to monopolize and drive up the prices we pay and silence Trump critics. Bezos’s Amazon, for example, won’t allow any seller on the site to post lower prices on any other site, and Bezos won’t allow his Washington Post editorial page to criticize Trump. Larry and David Ellison have bought CBS and sanitized “60 Minutes” of Trump criticism and effectively canceled Stephen Colbert. After buying X (formerly Twitter), Musk turned it into a pro-Trump voice box.

The AI oligarchs have bribed Trump and congressional Republicans to allow unfettered and unregulated growth of AI and its data centers, threatening millions of jobs and posing potential dangers to human life itself.

The crypto oligarchs have bribed Trump and congressional Republicans to allow them to create the world’s largest Ponzi scheme — which is enriching Trump and his family while providing a means for criminals to hide insider trades, child trafficking, and drug deals.

The Big Oil and aerospace oligarchs have bribed congressional Republicans to allow Trump to go to war in Iran, resulting in massive profits for Big Oil — while the rest of us pay $1.50 more per gallon of gas — and giant profits for giant military contractors.

This war spending has also contributed to higher inflation, which the rest of us pay for in higher mortgage rates and higher rates on car loans and education loans. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has surged to over 6.6 percent, reaching its highest level in nearly nine months, driven by rising Treasury yields, higher oil prices, and broader economic inflation concerns stemming from the war in Iran. The major beneficiaries of these higher rates — who pocket the higher payments we have to make — are the biggest banks and super-rich who make the loans.

Oligarchs have also bribed Trump and congressional Republicans to (1) get no-bid contracts, (2) deregulate Wall Street, (3) roll back environmental safeguards and worker safety, and (4) get massive subsidies for their corporations — all of which have made them even richer while making life for the rest of us more dangerous and more costly.

The art of the deal

From the folks who looted a kids' cancer charity

The brain's night shift: How sleep, waste clearance and dementia may be linked

Maybe it's a bad idea to spend all night shit-posting on social media

By University of Rochester Medical Center

Edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan

Why are conditions such as chronic stress, depression, cardiovascular disease, fragmented sleep, and aging all associated with a higher risk of dementia? 

In a new review piece in Science, University of Rochester Medicine neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard, MD, DMSc, proposes that many of these seemingly different conditions may converge on the same biological problem: disruption of a sleep-dependent brain rhythm that helps clear waste from the brain.

The article presents a new way of thinking about sleep, not simply as a period of rest, but as a highly organized biological state that coordinates brain chemistry, blood vessel movement, and cerebrospinal fluid flow to support the brain's nightly cleaning process.

The piece also points to a potential biomarker, heart rate variability, which can already be tracked with consumer wearables, as a simple, noninvasive way to assess sleep-related brain health and identify people at increased risk for cognitive decline.

Scientists uncover cancer-causing chemicals hidden in everyday foods

Moderate your cooking style

Seoul National University of Science & Technology 

More people are paying close attention to what they eat, often tracking calories, exercising daily, and filling their plates with foods that seem naturally healthy, including fruits and vegetables. 

Yet even nutritious foods can carry hidden chemical concerns. Some contaminants can enter food from the environment, while others can form during high heat cooking methods such as heating, smoking, grilling, roasting, and frying.

Among the compounds of concern are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs (hydrophobic organic compounds comprising multiple fused aromatic rings). 

Some PAHs are known for their cancer causing potential, which makes reliable food testing an important part of protecting public health.

EPA Claims ‘Overwhelming Rejection’ of EVs as It Moves to Loosen Air Pollution Rules

Based on false premise, EPA moves to create more smog

By Anika Jane Beamer

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

After eliminating the electric vehicle tax credit, rolling back fuel economy standards and blocking California’s stringent vehicle emissions rules, the Trump administration is now citing slowed electric vehicle growth as its rationale for loosening automobile air pollution standards.

In a rulemaking proposal released Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to delay the adoption of Biden-era Tier 4 air pollution standards for passenger cars and trucks and, going forward, to reconsider them.

The agency said that the proposed change is in response to “the overwhelming rejection of Electric Vehicles (EVs) by the American people and manufacturers shifting away from them.” It comes amid debate over environmental regulation and the influence of industry interests in the Trump administration.

Established in April 2024, the Tier 4 Criteria Pollutant Standards represent the most recent batch of vehicle emissions standards adopted under the Clean Air Act. The standards would have required manufacturers to meet fleet-average limits on smog-producing volatile organic compounds, oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and particulate matter tailpipe emissions, with phase-in beginning in 2027.

When the standards were first adopted in 2024, electric vehicles accounted for 8 percent of new light-duty vehicles (cars, vans and trucks weighing less than 8,500 pounds) sold in the United States.

EV growth was projected to continue. But soon after President Donald Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, he initiated a series of deregulatory actions that stunted EV market growth.

With Miller, it could always be worse

June 5: South County Rising community meeting

URI scientists working on advanced cancer treatment

Genetically reengineered bacteria targets cancerous tumors

Dawn Bergantino  

Cancerous tumors are masters of disguise that fly under the radar of the human immune system, hiding to evade capture while growing and wreaking havoc on their host’s health. 

However, when oncolytic (cancer-killing) bacteria are injected into a tumor, the immune system is alerted to the invader and destroys it, simultaneously attacking the tumor.

While previous research from Johns Hopkins University is successfully completing clinical trials, University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy Assistant Professor Kaitlin Dailey is expanding on that work to more specifically target tumors that are difficult or impossible to access, especially those associated with pancreatic cancer—one of the deadliest types. 

Scientists Discover Metformin Doesn’t Work the Way We Thought

How wonder drug works

By Kristin Samuelson, Northwestern University

For years, researchers believed metformin, the most widely used medication for type 2 diabetes, worked mainly by reducing glucose production in the liver. 

However, a new study from Northwestern University using mice suggests the drug’s primary target is actually the gut. Researchers found metformin lowers blood sugar by increasing glucose use in cells that line the intestine, helping prevent excess sugar from building up in the bloodstream.

Glucose is an essential source of energy for the body, but chronically high levels can contribute to insulin resistance and damage to blood vessels and organs. The study indicated that metformin reduces mitochondrial energy production in intestinal cells, forcing those cells to burn more glucose.

“Metformin essentially helps the intestine suck the glucose out of the bloodstream, which further highlights that the gut plays a major role in regulating blood sugar levels,” said corresponding author Navdeep Chandel, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The study was published in Nature Metabolism.

Nurses say Trump's CDC is "too weak" to handle the Ebola outbreak

Trump regime has gutted US ability to handle disease outbreaks

National Nurses United

Trump has other priorities

With a new Ebola outbreak announced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on May 15 and declared an international public health emergency just two days later, on top of the recent Andes hantavirus cruise ship outbreak, National Nurses United (NNU) — the nation’s largest union of registered nurses — is sounding the alarm on the Trump administration’s bungled response to emerging infectious diseases. 

Nurses know stopping outbreaks takes strong public health care systems, global cooperation, and support for frontline health care workers. Trump’s attacks on all of these have left our country less prepared to respond in this critical moment.

NNU issued the following statement:

“Nurses understand the life-or-death importance of prevention, and when it comes to infectious diseases, that means having strong infrastructure in place to rapidly detect and respond to new outbreaks before they are out of control. 

"The Trump administration has purposely taken a sledgehammer to that infrastructure over the past year. Instead of funding a robust web of public health experts, they have stolen from our public health resources to fund tax breaks for billionaires, ICE terror, and warfare abroad, threatening the lives of working people everywhere. 

As a result, we are only just now learning about hundreds of Ebola cases in the DRC, indicating that the virus has already been spreading for weeks or months before it was detected.

Let us be clear: The CDC under Trump is flying blind, and that is by design. Nurses are appalled that over the past year, the Trump administration has destroyed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and exited the World Health Organization (WHO), dismantling response infrastructure and delaying critical communications and information. 

What ever happening to the Green New Deal (besides Donald Trump)?

The Green New Deal has evolved. Now it’s all about ‘affordability.’

Kate Yoder, Senior Staff Writer

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

Eight years ago, three little words took hold of the environmental movement: Green New Deal. Part popular slogan, part political philosophy, the phrase described a sweeping agenda to create jobs, advance social justice, and combat climate change through major public investment inspired by the New Deal of the 1930s. 

The term made its way from hats and protest signs to the halls of power, where it shaped local and national policy. Progressives even pressured future president Joe Biden to adopt plans to address the crisis in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

Congress eventually whittled his ambitions down to the Inflation Reduction Act, a package of green tax credits and incentives that became the nation’s first comprehensive climate policy. That is, until Republicans dismantled the law last year. 

Under Donald Trump, the national policy wins Democrats had scored by leveraging the Green New Deal’s momentum all but vanished. The party was left soul-searching, wondering how it should talk about climate change, or if those calling for solutions should even talk about it at all.

Progressives seem to have settled on an answer: Make everything about affordability. A new climate agenda released by the Climate and Community Institute, a left-leaning think tank, aims to lower costs for everyday people through home insurance rate caps, bans on utility shutoffs, and other measures. 

It promotes “green economic populism,” a framework to provide relief for the working class through policies that also happen to cut carbon emissions (such as free transit or a moratorium on data centers), while regulating the corporations contributing to climate change and the cost-of-living crisis. 

The architects of the so-called “working-class climate agenda” say they’ve learned lessons from the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act: One lacked political will, while the other failed to deliver tangible results to working-class voters quickly enough. 

No more

Let them eat peanuts