The financial news that actually matters
Millions of married and formerly married Americans approach retirement expecting two Social Security checks: one earned through a lifetime of payroll taxes and a second earned as the spouse of a higher-earning husband or wife. Social Security was never built to pay both in full. A provision called dual entitlement delivers the larger of the…
A new federal audit has put a number on money the government left on the table. Investigators inside the Social Security Administration found that the agency failed to chase down an estimated $106 million in benefits it had overpaid to people who were already dead, largely because caseworkers did not follow the agency’s own recovery…
The list of what federal food benefits can buy is being rewritten state by state. A wave of federally approved waivers is stripping soda, candy, and other sweetened items out of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in a growing number of states, and South Carolina’s version takes effect at the end of August. For older…
An arcane line item on the mortgage statement has become the subject of a ten-state legal fight. Attorneys general in a coalition of states have sued federal banking regulators over rules that would let national banks stop paying interest on the funds homeowners are required to keep in escrow for taxes and insurance. For a…
A little-known escape hatch in Medicare’s rulebook is about to close for thousands of Rhode Island retirees. Beneficiaries who lost in-network access to Brown University Health hospitals after UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage contract lapsed have until August 31 to change plans outside the normal enrollment calendar. The window was approved by federal officials precisely because these…
The White House is claiming a milestone on drug costs, saying prescription prices have logged their sharpest annual decline in more than six decades. In an August statement, the administration credited its Most Favored Nation pricing push and its TrumpRx platform, and it directed patients toward weight-loss medications it says now start as low as…
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…
A Virginia hospital system is warning older patients that a key insurance contract is about to lapse. Mary Washington Healthcare, which runs hospitals and clinics in the Fredericksburg region, says its agreement with Humana’s Medicare Advantage plans is set to expire on September 1, and that the two sides are still negotiating a renewal. If…
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…
Tens of millions of Americans are about to receive a small, unexpected deposit from Google, and most of them will not have to lift a finger to get it. A $700 million antitrust settlement over the Google Play Store received final court approval this spring, and the money is now going out automatically through PayPal…
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