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Medicare’s financial future unexpectedly got a lot rosier, at least according to some federal budget wonks. The Congressional Budget Office recently published its long-term predictions of the federal budget and buried a big surprise for people who follow the Medicare program. The government’s primary piggy bank that pays for Medicare benefits won’t be depleted until 2052 — 17 years later than what CBO analysts predicted last year. (Herman, 4/5)

President Donald Trump’s first Medicare Advantage rule tabled decisions on plans' use of artificial intelligence and marketing oversight while dropping a proposal to cover obesity drugs. In the Medicare Advantage and Part D final rule for 2026 issued Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services delayed final decisions on expanding what counts as Medicare marketing, setting stricter network adequacy requirements, and determining the role of artificial intelligence in prior authorization. (Early, 4/4)

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a massive departmental overhaul and layoffs, including staffers in the Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office who began receiving notices at the beginning of the week. Among other areas, those staffers were responsible for working with states to wind down a complicated demonstration, the Financial Alignment Initiative, that covers certain people dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid in several states. (Early, 4/4)

Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online. The website has crashed repeatedly in recent weeks, with outages lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to almost a day, according to six current and former officials with knowledge of the issues. Even when the site is back online, many customers have not been able to sign in to their accounts — or have logged in only to find information missing. For others, access to the system has been slow, requiring repeated tries to get in. (Rein, Natanson and Dwoskin, 4/7)