A post shared on Facebook claims CBS News purportedly fired anchors Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan following the network’s Oct. 1 vice presidential debate. Verdict: False The claim is false and originally stems from an Oct. 3 article published on the satire site “SpaceX Mania.” Fact Check: An average of multiple polls shows 48% of […]

“We finally beat Medicare,” President Joe Biden claimed during his calamitous June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump. The White House later clarified: “He meant to say that he beat big pharma.” But seniors’ wallets are taking the beating. Changes made to Medicare’s prescription drug coverage by the Biden-Harris administration and congressional Democrats—with not a single Republican vote—as part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act are sending premiums sky-high, eliminating plans for at least 3 million seniors, and making it harder to access medications. The data shows that under four years of Biden-Harris administration policies (plan years 2022 through 2025), the national average monthly premium paid by Medicare beneficiaries for stand-alone Part D prescription drug plans has increased by 57%. At the same time, the average number of plans offered in each state has dropped by more than one-half, from 29 in 2021 to just 14 in 2025. Seniors in some states face even bigger hits to their wallets. Under the Biden-Harris administration, Medicare drug plan premiums jumped by more than 90% in 10 states. Premiums more than doubled in three of those states (California, 122%; New York, 116%; and Nevada, 104%). On Oct. 1, seniors were able to start “window shopping” Medicare drug plans for next year and will be able to enroll in their chosen plans starting Tuesday, Oct. 15.  Many of them already are expressing their sticker shock on community forms: “So I just got a new notice telling me that my drug plan D (not an advantage plan since I am on SSDI in NJ under 65) the monthly cost for 2025 has doubled. Plan still makes me pay high cost for anything not generic etc. I thought this new law was to reduce my overall cost but reading the updated booklet (AARP United Healthcare plan) seems to me the higher cost is going to pad them not me.” “… [my] husband’s increase was over 650%. And deductible also increased over 100%. You are going to want to check the formulary list if taking any prescription meds. One of the expensive meds husband is on wasn’t pricing out … when I went to the government website for [Aetna] SilverScript, it’s because it’s not covered anymore (nor is the generic covered) …” “They are no longer offering the plan I have this year for next year. This company is only offering one plan D, not 3 like last year.  My current premium is $9.90 and my 3 prescriptions have a $0 copay per month.  The new plan is $44.90 with $5 and $10 copays per month.  That is a huge increase.”  To prevent seniors from experiencing an even bigger sticker shock just before the Nov. 5 election, the Biden-Harris administration decided to spend—without congressional authorization or approval—at least another $5 billion. The spending is for a new “demonstration project” that pays insurers extra if they agree not to increase premiums by more than $35 a month in 2025. Specifically, the project does three things: Applies a uniform reduction of $15 to the base beneficiary premium for all plans. Limits premium increases to $35 per month. Limits risk to plans (and increases taxpayer losses) by narrowing Part D risk corridors. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this “demonstration project” will cost taxpayers $7 billion next year alone, with the program set to run for two more years. Because the Inflation Reduction Act made the market much more expensive, taxpayers will pay another $10 to $20 billion in 2025, according to the CBO. So much for savings. The CBO also said that its original score of the IRA undercounted the cost of the Part D changes by $10 to $20 billion. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, projected premiums would decrease in 2025. But that’s not reality. What CMS is concealing is that the average monthly premium is increasing despite the demo, and many plans will cost significantly above the average. Not only are premiums way up but coverage choices are way down and millions of beneficiaries are losing their existing plans. Once flush with plan options, the program is experiencing a devastating downturn. Seniors have fewer plans to choose from in 2025 than at any point in the program’s 19-year history. For instance, CVS Aetna offered three plans in every state in 2024 but discontinued two of them for 2025, one of which was the second-most popular of all plans in 2024. Similarly, UnitedHealthcare and Mutual of Omaha also each offered three plans nationwide in 2024. For 2025, though, United is offering two plans while Mutual of Omaha has dropped out of the program entirely. Higher premiums and fewer plan choices aren’t the only adverse effects on seniors stemming from the higher costs imposed on Medicare drug plans by Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act. Plans are trying to avoid the need for even bigger premium hikes by also increasing the coinsurance amounts that enrollees pay for prescriptions. Making a bad situation worse, the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug price controls will start to take effect in 2026. Those price controls discourage investment in drug development and will reduce the number of new medicines. The price controls also are likely to trigger secondary effects on Medicare prescription drug plans. Those will be in the form of changes to the placement of drugs on formularies and the imposition of utilization management strategies such as prior authorization and step therapy that restrict patient access. Higher costs for taxpayers and consumers, and fewer treatments for patients. Now you know what “we finally beat Medicare” really means. The post Biden-Harris Admin’s Medicare Shock for Seniors appeared first on The Daily Signal.

It's easy to look back at history and think it was always going to turn out as it did. Most people with a little economic literacy can kind of come up with a sentence or two about why the 2008 economic crisis was inevitable, for example, or why the dot-com bust was clear as day. Of course, the people who actually saw those events around the corner became very rich and got their faces on magazine covers, their stories in books, and Tom Cruise playing out their story on the big screen. None of that happened to you, did it? Fortunately, politics is a little easier, and if you can pull your head out of the polls, look at the candidates for who they actually are, and talk to normal people, you can make a pretty strong guess on where they’re going. Bear with me here and take a look at the last half-century of American politics. Former Fox News kingpin Roger Ailes had a rule about on-screen talent: women you’d be friends with (or date) and men you’d want to have a beer with (or date). President Jimmy Carter was a guy who pushed his “humble peanut farmer” bit to the brink, pretended to carry his own suitcases (they were empty; aides carried his actual luggage), extended dictatorial control over the White House tennis courts, and acted like a wuss on the international stage. Carter made us feel better about Watergate and a little more moral after the Vietnam disaster, so we gave him a shot in ’76. He beat Gerald Ford, whom no one voted into office and fewer liked. In 1980, Carter had to defend the title against Ronald Reagan, a California governor with literal movie-star good looks, a voice minted on the radio, and a promise to manifest a depressed nation’s Greatest Generation nostalgia. Who was going to win? Four years later, Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, didn’t stand a chance. But fast-forwarding a few years, how about Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the handsome, energetic, young, and cool moderate versus President George H.W. Bush, who talked like Dean Wormer and struggled in a grocery checkout line? Was Sen. Bob Dole cool enough to take Clinton down? There was a lot of hope! Clinton’s White House was mired in scandal, but things were going great in America, and for whatever reason, Dole hid his personality and sense of humor as best he could. Clinton crushed him. Then Democrats threw that nerd vice president, Al Gore, up against Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who chuckled, threw his cowboy boots on the desk, and won. So Democrats went back to the lab and found a guy just as weird as Gore but made him a windsurfer. They were so desperate for a veteran willing to run post-9/11 that they found the guy who threw his medals into the Reflecting Pool on national TV and called his comrades baby-killers. The stage at the DNC that year looked like a cross between a Bass Pro Shop and the set of “M*A*S*H.” It didn’t work. Sen. John Kerry lost. Or how about Sen. Barack Obama versus Sen. John McCain? A cultural movement that represented tomorrow and the promise of America’s racial redemption against the grumpy hero of a divisive war 40 years in the past? Then they ran the cool guy again against Gov. Mitt Romney. Even though a majority — a majority — of Americans thought the country was going in the wrong direction, in the end, it came down to the king of layoffs with binders full of women, Mr. CEO himself vs. Obama. Even though every poll showed Obama winning, the Republican eggheads were sure they were going to get him. Ho-hum. Former Fox News kingpin Roger Ailes had a rule about on-screen talent: women you’d be friends with (or date) and men you’d want to have a beer with (or date). It might sound outdated or sexist or backward to those who spent years and $100,000 to be taught that common sense is actually oppression, but it’s straightforward, it’s true, and you can see it in politics every election. Consider Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s not likeable. Sorry, but President Joe Biden doesn’t even like her. Obama doesn’t like her. Former first lady Michelle Obama really doesn’t like her. Oprah Winfrey has to work hard to sell her. Honestly, Kamala doesn’t even seem so into it herself. Over the past week's media tour, she was stilted, nervous, and low-energy whenever she was talking about politics. The only subject she lit up on was her personal life. The only policy that gets her going is abortion. If she wasn’t powerful or running for office and all that mattered was her personality, would you want to have beer with Kamala? Compare that to former President Donald Trump, who by all accounts is on top of his game. The rage and frustration that dominated his 2020 campaign are all but gone. He’s back to his funny self, dancing and cracking jokes on the campaign trail. Even the mysterious aura of 2016 has evaporated. NFL stars and comedians are openly on his side. You can wear a MAGA hat to most beaches — and when the white lady flips out, she’s the weirdo. There are a lot of polls out there, and most are pointing in the same direction: The floor is dropping out from under Harris and voters are breaking toward Trump (though Pennsylvania remains stubbornly close — and stubbornly necessary to victory). But setting aside that loose science for a minute, consider the candidates. Is this Kamala’s year? In hindsight, I suspect the answer will look pretty obvious. Sign up for Bedford’s newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter.

Role-playing games (RPGs) are an amazing game genre because they combine memorable stories with a variety of ways to play. That same variety of in-game options can also intimidate RPG newbies.

Frame.io V4 aims to make collaborating on large projects much easier by removing the need to jump between different apps. | Image:Adobe The latest version of Frame.io, Adobe’s review and collaboration platform for Video and photography, is rolling today, making it easier to manage sprawling creative projects in a single app. Available for all users on web, iPhone, and iPad, Frame.io V4 is the biggest update to the platform since it was launched in 2015, according to Adobe, and adds new tagging and collaboration features that make it feel more like a workflow management tool, such as Trello and Asana. It includes the “metadata” tagging model that was introduced in beta earlier this year, which allows users to assign custom tags like media type, assignee, due date, social media platform, and more to their files, making them easier to manage and review. Projects can also be... Continue reading…

The updated Remove Tool in Photoshop can now find and remove common distractions for you. | Image: Adobe Adobe is kicking off its annual Adobe Max conference today with the launch of new AI-powered features across its Creative Cloud apps. New AI features for Photoshop, like automatic background distraction removal and a more powerful Firefly generative AI model, are the biggest announcements, with Illustrator, InDesign, and Premiere Pro also getting new features that can help to speed up traditionally labor-intensive design tasks. For example, a new “Distraction Removal” feature has been added to the Remove Tool. Remove already works a bit like Google’s Magic Eraser feature on Pixel phones, allowing users to quickly remove unwanted objects from their images by brushing over them. The new Distraction Removal feature, which Adobe teased last... Continue reading…

Adobe’s Firefly Video Model can generate a range of styles, including ‘realism’ (as pictured). | Image: Adobe Adobe is making the jump into generative AI video. The company’s Firefly Video Model, which has been teased since earlier this year, is launching today across a handful of new tools, including some right inside Premiere Pro that will allow creatives to extend footage and generate video from still images and text prompts. The first tool — Generative Extend — is launching in beta for Premiere Pro. It can be used to extend the end or beginning of footage that’s slightly too short, or make adjustments mid-shot, such as to correct shifting eye-lines or unexpected movement. Clips can only be extended by two seconds, so Generative Extend is only really suitable for small tweaks, but that could replace the need to retake footage to correct tiny... Continue reading…

The iPhone 16 should be at the top of your list, whether you're buying your first iPhone or upgrading your current model. Apple Intelligence is the reason why. It might not be available right now, and you might not even like or want genAI. But Apple Intelligence is here to stay, and it's only improving. I'm sure you'll use parts of it and take it for granted in the coming years. That's why purchasing one of the four iPhone 16 models makes perfect sense, especially if you plan to keep your new iPhone for three or four years. However, I also get that the iPhone 16 might seem boring. And it could be too expensive for many people, too, with the cheapest model starting at $799. This is where I'll repeat myself: there is an iPhone 16 alternative that will be much cheaper but can still support Apple Intelligence. That's the oft-rumored iPhone SE 4, which should launch in the coming months. We still don't have a firm release date, but we're starting to see more iPhone SE 4 cases leak, which is a hint that the product is real and coming soon. Continue reading... The post Leaked iPhone SE 4 case shows us Apple’s major design changes appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Best Echo Dot deals for October 2024 ECOVACS Fall Prime Day blowout: Up to $350 off best-selling robot vacuums like the T30S Early Prime Day deals: Apple blowout, KitchenAid Stand Mixers, Dyson vacuums, $23 Echo Dot, OLED TVs, more Today’s deals: $40 in Amazon credit, Nintendo Switch games, $20 waterproof Bluetooth speaker, more

The senior naval officer in the U.S. military, the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, released a new strategy and vision for the U.S. Navy in September that was met with muted praise.