Social Security & Medicare
Benefit changes, claiming strategies, eligibility rules, Medicare enrollment, Part D updates, and policy changes affecting retirees.
Latest in Social Security & Medicare
About a third of one Florida system’s Medicare Advantage denials traced to a single insurer
Southwest Florida’s largest hospital system says it is ending its contracts with UnitedHealthcare, and the reason it gave points to a problem specific to Medicare...
Medicare may have overpaid Advantage insurers $462 million on unsupported stroke diagnoses
A federal watchdog says Medicare may have overpaid Medicare Advantage insurers by roughly $462 million, and the entire finding traces back to a single, narrow...
Home telehealth visits stay covered by Medicare through the end of 2027
Medicare’s telehealth-from-home flexibility — letting a beneficiary see a doctor by phone or video without traveling to a clinic — has been extended again, this...
Medicare Advantage members get one more chance to switch plans between January and March
Fall’s Annual Enrollment Period is not the last word on a Medicare Advantage plan. Anyone already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan gets a second...
Medicare Advantage benefit cards will stop rolling unspent balances into the next year
Grocery, dental and over-the-counter allowances loaded onto a Medicare Advantage debit card will no longer carry into the following year under a provision CMS finalized...
A Medicare income surcharge is set by the tax return you filed two years earlier
Medicare calculates a higher-income surcharge on Part B and Part D premiums using a household’s tax return from two years earlier, not the current year’s...
Three Medicare Savings Programs can cover the Part B premium, and one must be claimed yearly
Three federally required programs, the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary program, the Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary program, and the Qualifying Individual program, exist specifically to have someone...
Medicare’s Extra Help can erase a drug-plan premium, yet millions who qualify never sign up
Medicare’s Extra Help program can cut a Part D drug plan’s premium to zero, waive the deductible entirely, and cap the price of a generic...
A new exemption means some retirees get no warning before a lifelong Medicare drug penalty
A Medicare drug penalty that lasts for life usually comes with a paper trail: employers, unions and insurers that offer prescription coverage must tell Medicare-eligible...
Waiting until full retirement age lets a widow or widower collect the full survivor benefit
A widow or widower can start Social Security survivor benefits as early as age 60, but claiming that early comes at a lasting cost. Payments...
The earnings test docks a dollar of Social Security for every two dollars earned over the limit
Social Security’s earnings test surprises plenty of retirees who claim benefits early and keep working. For every two dollars of wages earned above the annual...
A federal audit found errors in three of every four Social Security sanction cases
A Social Security inspector general audit has found that agency staff and systems made errors in roughly three out of every four sampled cases where...
A watchdog says Social Security spent more chasing some overpayments than the debts were worth
Social Security’s independent watchdog has found that the agency spent roughly two million dollars more chasing a batch of small overpayments than it ever recovered,...
Because January 1 is a holiday, the first check with the 2027 raise lands December 31
The first Supplemental Security Income payment carrying the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment will reach recipients on December 31, 2026, not on January 1, according to the...
Nearly seven in ten Medicare Advantage plans expect skimpier benefits in 2027
A survey of the people who actually design Medicare Advantage benefit packages says next year’s plans are headed toward being thinner, not richer. HealthScape Advisors...
When your hospital leaves your Medicare Advantage plan mid-year, there is usually no way out
When a hospital system or physician group exits a Medicare Advantage plan’s network in the middle of the year, the newest federal rule leaves that...
Medicare’s next round of negotiated prices cuts some drugs up to 84 percent on January 1
On January 1, 2027, the second batch of Medicare-negotiated drug prices takes effect, cutting list prices on 15 widely used Part D medications by as...
The 2025 law shrinks Medicaid’s look-back coverage to two months for older adults on January 1
Starting January 1, 2027, a federal law cuts how far back Medicaid can pay for care that already happened, shrinking a look-back window that has...
Whatever Social Security announces October 14, a bigger Part B premium will eat into the raise
Social Security will announce the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment on October 14, the same morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the September inflation reading the...
Medicare has picked 15 more drugs for price cuts that begin in 2028
Medicare has selected 15 more drugs for its price negotiation program, and for the first time the list reaches beyond the retail pharmacy counter into...