Health plans welcome reforms to strengthen Medicare Advantage.

However, a proposal for flat program funding at a time of sharply rising medical costs

and high utilization of care will directly impact seniors' coverage.

If finalized, this proposal could result in benefit reductions and higher costs for 35 million

seniors and people with disabilities when they renew their Medicare Advantage

coverage in October 26. Learn more at AHIP.org.

Today on the Playbook podcast, the government has shut down, but hopefully not for long.

Donald Trump's cultural takeover continues and he's got the Kennedy Center in his sights. And Gavin Newsom's got a new book out.

Is it any good? Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Monday, February 2nd. Happy February. We made it

through the hardest month of year. You a January kind of

person, I said. January was a couple of lifetimes long. Oh, wow. I can't believe that was one month

in 2026. January started with the Maduro thing. I mean, that feels like so long ago, right? That feels like so long ago.

And then there was Greenland and then there was ice. And then there was, I mean, okay. And then there was literally ice. I just, there's a lot. Imagine what February has got in store. January, of course, finished with the government shutting down. Again, as many people have predicted it was going to and we are in a partial shutdown today but we're not expecting it to last

very long as I'm sure listeners know we've got the House and the Senate coming back today

Dash and Mike Johnson the speaker was pretty positive that he would get things moving in time

to reopen again tomorrow was his sort of line on it. But the really interesting thing

about Mike Johnson's predicament, Dasher, is as of today, they're swearing in the new member

of Congress, Christian Meneffey in Texas. That brings Mike Johnson's math down to a one. He has a one

majority. It is the tightest majority you could literally ever have, and he's going to have that for a very long time. Has he literally now got the hardest job in DC? What do you reckon?

Yeah, I mean, you can't really slice it up any thinner than that, given we're talking humans here. Yeah, it's remarkable. But let's just think about how night and day this shutdown is compared to what we saw last year.

I mean, first of all, but Johnson is swearing someone in. Whoa. That didn't happen during the last shutdown.

Number two, I mean, House Democrats are going to be making their stand and doing their messaging thing now on this.

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