The financial news that actually matters
A change buried in last year’s sweeping tax law is about to double how often millions of Medicaid enrollees must prove they still qualify. Under the measure signed in 2025, states will have to redetermine eligibility every six months instead of once a year for a large share of adult enrollees, with the requirement kicking…
The Treasury Department and the IRS have proposed a set of rules that would shape how money grows inside Trump Accounts, the new tax-favored savings accounts created for children under last year’s tax law. The proposal would cap the annual fees on the investments held in these accounts at one-tenth of one percent and would…
A growing number of hospitals are cutting ties with Medicare Advantage plans, and the finance executives who run those systems say the retreat is only picking up speed. A flash poll of hospital and health-system finance leaders released in mid-August found that nearly a quarter have already terminated, declined to renew, or materially narrowed at…
Buried in the thick stack of paperwork a family signs to move a parent into a nursing home is often a single page that can matter more than any other: an arbitration agreement. Signing it can quietly surrender the family’s right to take the facility to court if care goes badly, routing any future dispute…
Among the quiet traps waiting for older Americans who carry old debt, few are as costly as a single, well-intentioned payment. A debt that has aged past the point where a collector can legally win a lawsuit is called time-barred, and in many states it can be jolted back to life by a small gesture…
For homeowners who lived through the 2008 housing crash, a letter demanding payment on a mortgage they thought was gone can feel like a mistake. Often it is not. Second mortgages that went silent more than a decade ago, and that many borrowers assumed were forgiven, wiped out, or folded into a refinance, are being…
A growing number of homeowners are opening their mail to find that the insurer they have paid for years will not renew their policy, and the reason traces back to a photograph they never saw taken. Carriers increasingly rely on aerial, satellite, and drone imagery, run through automated systems that flag a worn roof, moss,…
A power of attorney is meant to be an act of trust: a parent names someone to handle money and bills if illness or age makes it hard to do so alone. In the right hands it is one of the most useful documents a family can have. In the wrong ones, it is a…
To a retiree staring at a drained checking account, the cruelest detail of a payment scam is often the same one the con artist was counting on. Money moved by bank wire or through a real-time app such as Zelle behaves much more like handing over an envelope of cash than swiping a credit card….
Most class-action settlements ask the people they benefit to do something: find the notice, file a claim, meet a deadline. A proposed $11 million deal over an obscure charge buried in certain life-insurance policies is built differently. If a judge signs off next month, eligible policyholders would receive refund checks automatically, with no form to…