expectations

WASHINGTON — The Medicare reform bill expected to clear Congress in the next few days promises the prescription drug benefit older Americans have been waiting for. But analysts say many seniors will find that the plan fails the what’s-in-it-for-me test.

The drug benefit is the centerpiece of a $400-billion bill, endorsed by a conference committee Thursday, that would make the most far-reaching changes in Medicare since its enactment in 1965. But the bill’s particulars suggest that the benefit will vary depending on seniors’ drug needs and incomes.

“Seniors felt they had been promised the kind of prescription drug coverage that members of Congress have,” said Judith Feder, dean of public policy at Georgetown University. “What they’re getting doesn’t even remotely resemble that.”

Just last week, President Bush implied that the new benefits would be much like those enjoyed not only by many working average Americans, but also by their elected representatives.

“Every member of Congress gets to choose a health-care plan that makes the most sense for them. And the same for federal employees. If choice is good for members of the Congress, then choice is good for America’s seniors,” he said.

Drew Altman, president of the Menlo Park-based Kaiser Family Foundation, an independent health-care philanthropy, said seniors were expecting the bill to create a benefit similar to employer coverage — a patient makes a co-payment of perhaps $10 or $20 toward each prescription, and insurance picks up the rest. But the plan in Congress is very different, Altman said, resulting in what he called an “expectations gap.”

The first gap is one of timing. Even if Congress passes the bill by Thanksgiving and Bush signs it soon after, the prescription drug benefit wouldn’t begin to kick in until 2006.

To fill that void, the bill would create a Medicare-endorsed discount card that the Bush administration estimates would help seniors save from 15% to 25% on their prescriptions. Low-income seniors would also get the equivalent of a $600 credit for each of the two years the discount card would be valid.

Once the real benefit begins, what seniors with low to moderate drug expenses would get indeed would not be very different from what many employer-based plans provide. Seniors who chose to join the program would pay a monthly premium of $35, plus the first $250 of their drug costs each year. Medicare would then start picking up 75% of additional expenses.

But as seniors’ drug expenses mounted, the Medicare benefit would differ significantly from traditional health coverage. When total annual drug costs reached $2,250, government support would stop. Seniors would be responsible for the next $2,850 in drug costs. Only when their drug bill for the year reached $5,100 would Medicare begin paying 95% of all further costs.

The span of drug expenses in which Medicare would contribute nothing would affect millions of people. It would begin at close to the $2,322 that the average Medicare user paid in 2003 for prescriptions, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And Medicare drug insurance would kick in again for only a relatively small slice of seniors.

Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis for Consumers Union, estimated that substantially fewer than 10% of seniors would have drug expenses that qualified for Medicare’s “catastrophic” coverage for costs above $5,100.

Because Medicare’s coverage likely would not offset any drug price increases, most seniors, she said, would spend more for drugs in 2007, with the program fully in effect, than in 2003.

In most areas, Medicare will not be the only choice for drug coverage. The bill allows for health-maintenance organizations, preferred-provider organizations and stand-alone drug insurance to compete for business.

But Feder said she saw “no evidence that the insurance industry is willing or able to fill this need.” The bill recognizes this possibility by authorizing government-run drug plans in areas where no private plan or only a single plan is available.

Shearer warned that in areas where stand-alone drug plans competed with Medicare, seniors would probably have difficulty determining which one offered the best deal. What’s more, she said, plans would vary from state to state and region to region, adding to the confusion.

Retirees whose drug costs are covered by insurance from their former employers would face another risk: that their employers will use the Medicare drug benefit as an opportunity to shed their own retiree coverage. The bill sets aside $71 billion in tax-free subsidies to encourage employers to keep such coverage.

But even the bill’s supporters acknowledge that 16% of retirees who now have such coverage — roughly 2 million seniors — would likely lose it anyway.

The bill’s prescription drug benefit makes allowances for seniors whose incomes are under the poverty line — $8,980 for an individual and $12,120 for a couple. They would have no premiums or deductibles and would pay $1 a month for generic prescription drugs and $3 a month for brand-name drugs.

Those seniors earning up to 35% above the poverty level would pay $2 and $5. Those with incomes up to 50% more than the poverty level would be required to pay a $50 deductible, 15% of their drug costs up to $5,100, and $2 or $5 for each prescription above that level.

But those small co-payments could become harder to make because the bill apparently would eliminate the practice of using Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, to pick up the costs that Medicare misses for the elderly poor.

Bob Greenstein, head of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said most of the 6.4 million people who qualified for both Medicare and Medicaid would pay more for their prescriptions than they did now.

Two public opinion polls conducted this week by AARP, the nation’s largest seniors organization, indicated that many of the 40 million elderly and disabled people affected by the legislation have mixed feelings.

A poll commissioned by the Democratic-leaning AFL-CIO found that the more seniors learned about the Medicare bill, the less they liked it.

“When they get the details of this deal, older voters will be furious with their representatives,” said federation President John Sweeney.

The conclusion of Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth Advocacy, whose poll focused on the costs of the bill to the government, was about the same.

“When America’s seniors learn of the potentially devastating impact of the bill, they turn strongly against it,” he said.

*

Times staff writer Joel Havemann contributed to this report.

The NFL mountaintop this season sits 10 stories underground.

That’s the subterranean field at SoFi Stadium, playing host on Feb. 14, 2027 to its second Super Bowl. The first came five years earlier when the Rams beat Cincinnati on their home field.

It will mark the ninth Super Bowl in the Los Angeles area across three venues: the Coliseum (two), Rose Bowl (five) and SoFi (two). But in some ways, all those previous games were a drumroll leading up to this one — Super Bowl LXI, in a futuristic $5-billion stadium, absent the lingering restrictions of a pandemic.

“Super Bowl LVI was an amazing experience, but it was still on that tail end of COVID, and it was not everything that this Super Bowl LXI could be,” said Peter O’Reilly, NFL executive vice president of club business, international and league events.

“We didn’t do a Super Bowl Opening Night — it was virtual — and there were a lot of things we were still adjusting. … It was absolutely spectacular during the weekend and on game day, but I do think this Super Bowl gives us all the chance to do it full-on, in the way an L.A. Super Bowl can and should be.”

In the weeks leading up to the first Super Bowl at SoFi, there were misguided rumblings that the game might be moved to Dallas, because the NFL had secured that city as a backup. But those type of contingency plans are in place for every Super Bowl, and the game was not in serious peril of being moved. Still, there was a cloud of public doubt lingering over the event.

“Those rumors created a lot of havoc and uncertainty in our market,” said Kathy Schloessman, chief executive of the Los Angeles Super Bowl Host Committee for both games. “It was hard to get the excitement going because people didn’t know if the city was open or closed. I almost hate to say it because I don’t want to jinx anything, but this is our first normal Super Bowl planning.”

Super Bowls can take over a city. Look at the games played in New Orleans, Indianapolis or Houston. Seemingly every resident was aware the game was happening. But in some of the bigger cities — New York, Los Angeles, Miami — there aren’t reminders everywhere you turn.

Something that might offset that this season is ESPN is broadcasting the game for the first time, and has been hyping it ever since the most recent Super Bowl ended.

“It’s a year of the Super Bowl for them that ends in Los Angeles,” O’Reilly said. “That feels natural and poetic. I can’t say enough good things about the way they’ve embraced it.”

South side view of the field at SoFi Stadium.

(Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Times)

Disney is the parent company of ESPN, and likewise has embraced the game, which feels like a true confluence of the sports and entertainment industries.

“When I think about L.A. and brands coming together — Disney, SoFi Stadium, the Rams — I think it takes advantage of what the NFL had always hoped when bringing a Los Angeles team back,” Rams president Kevin Demoff said. “SoFi Stadium is that marriage of the NFL and entertainment.”

Whether they play in the game or not, the Rams are intimately connected to this Super Bowl, as they are the host team. That means they have a degree of financial responsibility to make good on the commitments made to the NFL when Los Angeles was awarded the game. They also are allotted more tickets to the game than the other franchises not hosting (or playing in) the event.

Although the Chargers were co-hosts for the first Super Bowl at SoFi, they opted not to host this one. According to a Chargers spokesman, they chose to cede the stage to Rams owner Stan Kroenke, whose vision they credit for the stadium and Hollywood Park development, but will make a “significant seven-figure financial commitment” to the host committee in the run-up to the game.

Part of Kroenke’s vision in moving the Rams and building the stadium and surrounding campus was to shift the center of gravity of the sporting world to Los Angeles. It’s worth noting that SoFi was a central location of the World Cup — the first U.S. goal was scored there — and will play host to swimming events in the 2028 Olympic Games.

“[SoFi] is now established as one of the world’s greatest sporting stages, which the Super Bowl helped put on the map the first time,” Demoff said. “But now it’s in the middle of this global run.”

It isn’t just the Super Bowl. SoFi will also play host to the NFL’s first-ever Thanksgiving Eve game — Rams versus Green Bay Packers — on Netflix.

“If you’re looking at the arc — not as a Super Bowl but how the NFL wanted to come back to Los Angeles — you have Disney, a longstanding, old-school entertainment partner,” Demoff said. “And then you have this element of streaming and new media and where the NFL is heading. It’s a really interesting juxtaposition.”

The United States economy has added 162,000 jobs in August, with large gains in local government education and food services.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged, according to the monthly jobs report released by the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday.

The data was well above analysts’ expectations. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 56,000 gains, the Wall Street Journal forecast 53,000, and Bloomberg had forecast 55,000, following a loss of 23,000 in July.

Local government education, or public schools, accounted for nearly 42,000 of the jobs added as the 2026–27 school year begins across much of the US. Teachers typically fall off payrolls during the summer months when school is not in session.

Food service jobs also saw large increases, with the sector adding 59,000 jobs for the month of August compared with the month prior.

There were also gains in construction, which added 22,000 jobs, and healthcare, which added 12,000.

The information sector, which accounts for industries like data processing, web hosting, publishing, broadcasting and telecommunications, fell by 23,000, with notable layoffs at companies including Scripps TV and Zillow, which fall under the umbrella of these industries.

The financial activities sector, which accounts for industries like insurance, commercial banking and real estate, dropped by 12,000.

Mixed data

The data comes in sharp contrast to the ADP national employment report, which tracks private payrolls and found 38,000 jobs added across the US economy.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report released on Tuesday revealed job openings were slightly changed, with 7.3 million in July, up from 7.2 million the previous month, while total separations fell to 5.1 million in July from 5.3 million in June.

The move in job gains comes ahead of the US Federal Reserve’s policy meeting later this month, where the central bank will vote on interest rates. Amid the job gains, CME Group’s FedWatch, which tracks the likelihood of monetary policy decisions, had a 60 percent chance of a 25 basis point rate increase to 3.75–4.00 percent, up from 49 percent on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump was quick to comment on the jobs report and push for rate cuts.

“Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was a short time ago!” he said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

He also ramped up threats to cut off trade with nations that the US has a deficit with if the central bank does not cut rates.

Despite a strong jobs report, US markets are trending downwards. The Nasdaq is down 0.2 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.5 percent, and the S&P 500 is down 0.3 percent amid Trump’s comments.

Meanwhile, Canada released its jobs report amid the ongoing trade dispute with the US. The Canadian economy lost 41,700 jobs, according to Statistics Canada, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 6.4 percent.

“We expect the economy will continue struggling to create jobs in the near term as mounting headwinds from new US-Canada tariffs, greater uncertainty from a flare-up in the trade war, and the ongoing Iran conflict and a shrinking population weigh on hiring,” Tony Stillo, director of Canada Economics at Oxford Economics, said in a note provided to Al Jazeera.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told a briefing held on August 20, 2026, that “a substantial package of intergovernmental documents and commercial contracts is planned to be signed during the Russia-Africa summit, scheduled for late October.” Given the “mutual interest in stepping up our trade and investment cooperation, we plan to focus the agenda of the upcoming summit meeting on economic matters,” she said.

There, the attendees can discuss in substance a wide range of matters, including boosting Russian-African ties in agriculture, healthcare, education, and scientific-technical and cultural cooperation. “We expect to sign a substantial package of interstate documents and commercial contracts during the event. Well, and we also note, of course, with satisfaction, our partners’ considerable interest in the forthcoming event. Many African capitals have already confirmed their attendance and declared their intention to send representative delegations to Moscow, including heads of state entities and businessmen, of course,” Zakharova explained.

“We have a huge potential in this sphere, which has not yet been fully realized, as everyone admits. Key priorities have also been determined: to cooperate on peaceful uses of nuclear power; to develop independent payment systems, food security, and digitalization, including the adoption of artificial intelligence,” Zakharova underlined.

It is time to face rising realities and the balance of investment power in this 21st century. Whether Russia colonized Africa or never colonized Africa, the most convincing and essential factor is Africa simply has to work with the world’s players. Africa should collaborate with potential foreign investors with adequate funds, in practical terms, ready to invest in its development as exemplified by China. And there is still a growing sense of analytical debates over Russia’s policy approach, though. Ultimately, at least three fundamental assumptions, or appropriately primary principles, can be described as follows:

*Russia’s forthcoming October 2026 The Russia-Africa summit is framed as a chance to consolidate dozens of prior agreements and shift toward concrete economic cooperation in trade, investment, nuclear energy, food security, digitalization, and independent payment systems, yet critics note that rhetoric and signed MoUs have so far produced limited tangible results on the ground.

*Despite historical Soviet-era goodwill and frequent high-level visits, Russia remains a marginal player in African infrastructure, industry, and agriculture compared with China, the EU, and the United States; many announced projects have stalled, financing instruments are weak, and younger Africans see little contemporary economic impact beyond anti-Western messaging.

*Experts and African partners urge Moscow to move beyond nostalgia for past assistance, deliver on existing pledges with real capital and project execution, leverage platforms such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and engage Africa’s large youth and middle-class markets if it wishes to convert political alignment into sustained, mutually beneficial economic partnership.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) provides a unique and valuable platform for businesses to access an integrated African market of over 1.4 billion people. The growing middle class, estimated at 380 (twice the aggregate of Russia’s population), among other factors, constitutes huge market potential in Africa. The African continent, currently, has enormous potential as a huge market, which some experts often refer to as the last business market frontier. Nevertheless, Africa’s trade with the European Union stands at $400 billion, and with China, almost $300 billion. And based on military equipment and weapons and agricultural products such as ice cream, chicken meat, fertilizers, and grain exports, Russia quoted a bilateral trade figure as $27 billion in June 2026.

The world is, increasingly, becoming multipolar. Therefore, Africa’s strength has to be directed at continental development and entrepreneurship, not at building solidarity for geopolitical games. Many African countries are enacting economic reforms; demand is growing for high-quality, competitive products. Russian businesses are interested in this niche, but Russian operators are extremely slow. The ‘snail-pace approach’ reflects their inability to determine financial instruments for supporting trade with Africa and corporate investments in Africa.

There is some level of optimism for a change, though. Russia plans to hold the next Russia-Africa summit in late October 2026. And Sergey Lavrov, minister of foreign affairs of the Russian Federation, indicated in an explicit message mid-July that “in these difficult and crucial times, the strategic partnership with Africa has become a priority of Russia’s foreign policy. Russia highly appreciates the readiness of Africans to further step up economic cooperation.”

At a meeting of the ministry’s collegium, Lavrov strongly suggested the necessity of borrowing a chapter on policy approaches and methods adopted by China in Africa. In fact, Lavrov’s suggestion exposes the inability to play catch-up and, most significantly, Russia’s financial fragility. Lavrov also said, “It is in the interests of our peoples to work together to preserve and expand mutually beneficial trade and investment ties under these new conditions. It is important to facilitate the mutual access of Russian and African economic operators to each other’s markets and encourage their participation in large-scale infrastructure projects. The signed agreements and the results will be consolidated at the forthcoming Russia-Africa summit.”

During the past years, there have been several meetings of various bilateral intergovernmental commissions both in Moscow and in Africa. The first Sochi summit discussed broadly the priorities and further identified opportunities for collaboration. There were 92 agreements signed in Sochi, which totaled RUB 1.004 trillion (equivalent to $12.5 bn), and approximately 240 agreements during the African Leaders Summit held in St. Petersburg, according to official documents. It, however, requires understanding the specific tasks and emerging challenges. The current tasks should concretely focus on taking practical and collaborative actions leading to goal-driven results. Notwithstanding the lapses, Lavrov hopes “the signed agreements and the results will be consolidated at the forthcoming Russia-Africa summit.”

Accentuating the importance of multilateral cooperation between Russia and Africa, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation Anton Kobyakov said, “The current situation in the world is such that we are witnesses to the formation of new centers of economic growth in Africa. Competition for African markets is growing, accordingly. There is no doubt that Russia’s non-commodity exporters will benefit from cooperating with Africa on manufacturing, technologies, finances, trade, and investment.”

Kobyakov pointed to modern Russia, which already has experience of successful cooperation with African countries under its belt, as ready to make an offer to the African continent that will secure a mutually beneficial partnership and the joint realization of decades of painstaking work carried out by several generations of Soviet and Russian people.

The Soviet Union was quite extensively engaged in Africa, comparatively. Historical documents show that after the Soviet collapse, there were approximately 380 mega-projects across Africa. In the early 1990s, Russia exited, closed a number of diplomatic offices, and abandoned all these, and now there are hardly any signs of Soviet-era infrastructure projects across Africa. And now post-Soviet relations are interestingly engulfed in extensive geopolitics; Russia has only engaged in trading anti-Western slogans on the continent, which also threatens the African Union’s steps to consolidate African unity. 

In addition, Russia has only been criticizing other foreign players during the past two decades without showing any of its own template model of building relationships directed at transforming Africa’s economy. Moreover, Russian officials have underestimated the fact that Russia’s overall economic engagement is largely staggering; various business agreements signed are still not fulfilled with many African countries. Its foreign policy goal is simply to sustain the passion for declarations, signing several MoUs and bilateral agreements with African countries. Grappling with reality, there are equally many investment challenges, including official bureaucracy and the governance system in Africa.

Despite this policy rhetoric and attractive summit outlines, Russia still plays very little role, particularly in Africa’s infrastructure, agriculture, and industry. Investing in agriculture to ensure food security and investing in industry to add value to raw materials in the continent. While, given its global status, it ought to be active in Africa with noticeable corporate investments, similar to policy models of Western Europe, the European Union, the United States, and China, it is all but absent, consistently engages in geopolitical symbolism and rhetoric, and plays a negligible role, according to Professor Gerrit Olivier at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, and former South African Ambassador to the Russian Federation.

Now at the crossroads, it could be meandering and longer than expected to make the mark. If existing challenges, obstacles, and impediments are not addressed, Russia’s return journey could take another generation to reach its destination, Africa. If not at the crossroad, then possibly at the periphery of Africa. With the current rapidly changing geopolitical world, Russia has to redefine and reassess policy parameters and adopt a more strategic approach, working with absolute consistency within the principle of finding common solutions to Africa’s development expectations and consolidating its economic sovereignty.

*This is part of the forthcoming book: Putin’s African Dream: Emerging Challenges and Opportunities (Third e-handbook).