Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ambitious plan to rein in prescription drug costs through a statewide purchasing system — pooling the power of California’s largest public and private buyers — has a new ally: Los Angeles County.

The Trump administration’s top Medicare official used an annual report on the program’s fiscal outlook to attack proposals by some Democrats to expand government health-care coverage to all Americans.

UnitedHealth Group has been a stock market darling for much of the past decade, dependably churning out earnings increases and rewarding shareholders with staggering returns.

For a patient’s knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance.

Affordable health care continues to be an important concern of Americans.  Many Democrats are advocating “Medicare for All” as a solution, although the details of a Medicare for All system are still being developed and it’s unclear whether a proposal can be developed that all Democrats would support.

Medicare's hospital insurance fund will be depleted in 2026, as previously forecast, and Social Security program costs are likely to exceed total income in 2020 for the first time since 1982, according to a government report released on Monday.