Strengthing Medicare Many Americans know how hard it is to keep Medicare strong because it is their security for health care. Skyrocketing health care cost threatens many individuals and they worry about the long-term solvency if it will still be around or enough funding in the program to care for them and their children. “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a report demonstrating how much, and how fast provisions of the Affordable Care Act will improve the financial health of Medicare” (Berwick, 2010). New savings and strategies will strengthen Medicare financial outlook and help lead the system of health care of all ages. Reducing excessive payments to private health insurances companies, hold down on prescription drug prices and suggesting generic brands to consumers. Preventing fraud of Medicare that has wasted so much money is the first thing, and replacing the technology to keep up with fraud when it occurs. This will enable law enforcement to act quickly in strengthing the system to catch fraudulent activity. Being wasteful in cost is another way to strengthen Medicare. This is referring to getting equipment, or treatments that do nothing to help the individual get healthy or something that could make the individual worse than before. Many time physicians want to have an individual tested or given treatments, because they worry about a lawsuit. The physician wants to give the individual the best health care, but it sometimes involves wasteful spending and high price medication the individual cannot afford. “Medicare should be allowed to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers, just as private insurers do” (Rend, 2013). The health care provider should look at other alternatives and worry about getting the individual health restored. This could run into billions and billions of dollars each year not counting the