Medicare's popular prescription program has an unsavory underside. It's an easy target for drug abusers seeking to feed their own addictions or sell painkillers for profit, congressional investigators said in a report released Tuesday.

Democrats are hitting the reset button on health care for next year's elections. Weary of getting pounded over the new health overhaul law, President Barack Obama and his party are changing the subject to Medicare.

The Obama administration has shelved a financially troubled long-term care insurance plan. Officials said Thursday the staff has been cut and it's an "open question" if the program will be implemented.

The number of young adults without health insurance has dropped significantly, a new survey finds, thanks to a provision of President Barack Obama's health care law allowing them to stay on their parents' plans.

Health care savings in President Barack Obama's deficit-reduction plan would squeeze future Medicare recipients, cut payments to drug companies and hospitals, and shift costs to states.

Republicans want to pull the plug on the health care overhaul they call "Obamacare," blaming it in part for the United States' ballooning budget deficit. But they're quiet when it comes to the Medicare drug benefit another massive health care entitlement, with unfunded future costs over $7 trillion.

Turning a usually routine announcement into a pointed rebuttal of its GOP critics, the Obama administration said Thursday that premiums for popular Medicare Advantage insurance plans will drop for 2012, while enrollment is expected to rise.

Even as leading Democrats offered assurances to the contrary, government experts repeatedly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan could go belly up, saddling taxpayers with another underfunded benefit program, according to emails disclosed by congressional investigators.