According to data released in January 2017, 56 percent of bills are paid online, which means that just under half of payments still rely on delivery services to be completed.

Mail delivery service is still responsible for the completion of almost half of payments.

Expanding the three-year option may be difficult, but it may be less difficult than asking Congress for additional financial help, asking legislators for more state support, or asking students even higher tuition payments.

The woman's company failed to make payments in time.

At first, Rosen bought groceries and made house payments with the help from unemployment insurance.

Both bills would reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers by amounts comparable to the productivity savings routinely made in other industries with the help of new technologies and new ways to o

But the boost in investor confidence needed for the plan to work will take time, time that Rosen says still requires him to buy food and make monthly mortgage payments.

For the most part, these experiments rely on incentive payments to get doctors to try them.

Most agree that the solution is to push doctors to accept fixed payments to care for a particular illness or for a patient's needs over a year.

That is far less likely to happen if Congress also adopts strong "pay-go" rules requiring that any increase in payments to providers be offset by new taxes or budget cuts.