The financial news that actually matters
Explains Medicare coverage, eligibility, benefits, enrollment rules, and healthcare planning for retirees. It simplifies government healthcare programs for better understanding.
A Medigap policy with a high deductible does not start paying on the first dollar of a bill. Under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ March 2026 Medigap guide, a policyholder with a high-deductible Plan F or Plan G must cover the first $2,950 of 2026 costs personally before the insurer pays anything. The…
The federal Medicare agency has put a number on how cheap a Part D drug plan will be to find for 2027. CMS says 93% of non-low-income Medicare beneficiaries will have access to an enhanced Part D plan at less than $6 a month. The figure is a forecast of access built from accepted plan…
Medicare patients who take certain physician-administered drugs could see their share of the bill fall sharply under a mandatory pricing model the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized this week. The agency’s own illustration shows 94 percent of the drugs it modeled carrying coinsurance of between 2 and 12 percent, compared with the standard…
Florida’s Medicare Advantage market is about to get smaller, and the state it serves is large. CMS’s 2027 state fact sheet, dated September 28, 2026, counts 5,334,437 Florida residents enrolled in Medicare and shows the number of Medicare Advantage plans in the state falling from 611 this year to 560 for 2027. Open enrollment for…
Medicare will require prior authorization for an ultralightweight manual wheelchair and for three types of back brace starting October 28, 2026, along with four other items on a list of eight added by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The supplier has to ask for approval before the item is delivered, and a claim…
A watchdog referral program has trimmed $78 million from what Medicare and its enrollees pay for Part B drugs since 2013, according to a September 2026 data brief from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. Patients generally owe 20 percent of the Medicare-approved amount on those drugs after the Part…
A Social Security rule called the hold harmless provision keeps a Medicare Part B premium increase from shrinking a benefit payment, but the Social Security Administration’s own explainer lists who falls outside it: people enrolling in Part B for the first time, people who pay an income-related monthly adjustment amount, dual eligibles whose premium Medicaid…
Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health Plan will stop offering its Medicare Advantage plan after December 31, 2026, and members who lose it have until February 28, 2027 to enroll in a replacement. That is almost three months past the December 7 close of general Open Enrollment, which opens October 15. The plan’s closing notice, last updated…
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released its 2027 state-by-state Medicare Advantage fact sheets on September 28, and the plan counts move in opposite directions depending on the state. Arkansas drops from 91 plans to 84 and Georgia from 166 to 161, while Indiana rises from 127 to 140 and Kentucky from 114 to…
Medicare.gov has not published 2027 income limits for the Medicare Savings Programs, the state-run programs that can pay a beneficiary’s Part B premium. The program page still carries a single set of limits, and it labels them 2026. Open Enrollment begins Oct. 15, two weeks from now, so beneficiaries are approaching the decision window without…