Free Republic

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- Vice President Joe Biden sought to reassure nervous seniors Wednesday that they won't see cuts in their Medicare benefits if the nation's health care system is revamped. "Nobody is going to mess with your benefits. All we do is make it better for people on Medicare," Biden told about 150 people at Leisure World in suburban Maryland. President Barack Obama and the White House contend that Medicare benefits won't be affected even though legislation in Congress would cut payments to Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.

Marion Bigelow Higgins, recognized as the oldest person in California, has died of congestive heart failure at her home in Leisure World. She was 112. Higgins was recognized as the oldest person in California, the sixth oldest in the United States and the 11th oldest in the world, according to an Orange County Register report on Friday. Officials with the state Department of Aging could not immediately verify Friday whether she was California's oldest person. Funeral arrangements for Higgins, who died Thursday, were pending, relatives said. "She finally began to show her age in recent months after 112 years of...