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, nine days to go until another government shut down,

we'll give you the latest on where the negotiations are at. Donald Trump is at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning and its primary day in New Jersey. We'll bring you the latest from there. Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Mia McCarthy and it's Thursday, February 5th.

Mia McCarthy back with us on Capitol Hill. How are you doing, Mia?

Good. How are you? Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure to have you back. We get Mia in, guys, when we really need to get deep into

the congressional story. And I'm sorry to say for people that love their government to stay open

that this is one of those days

when we need to get into it because we are sort of trundling from shutdown to potential shutdown,

aren't we at the moment, it's only a few days ago that we were talking about, the last one,

and now, well, what is it, Thursday morning, we have a deadline next Friday night to get DHS funded,

and it's looking kind of in the balance at the moment as to whether that's going to happen. Yeah, that's what we're going to see. I mean, it feels like deja vu a little bit, right? And we've already had a shutdown in between that time. But yeah, right now, I mean, it's like the sides don't seem like they have an agreement. and they have a deadline at the end of next week to reach government funding for the Department of Homeland Security. So we'll see

if they're able to get to any sort of agreement there. Yeah. Let's dig in a little bit into

where the negotiations are actually at. So we got the bill passed earlier this week that just gave

them a two-week extension on DHS funding.

And of course, the Democrats have been digging their heels in ever since the shooting of Alex

Preti demanding a series of reforms about the way the ICE operates in places like Minnesota

...