Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Washington regulators approved an average 22.2 percent increase on 2027 Exchange individual health plans affecting 281,055 people
Washington’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner has approved an average rate increase of 22.2 percent for the 2027 Exchange health insurance market, a shade under the 22.4 percent that insurers asked for. The office counts 281,055 people as affected by the rate changes across the approved plans. Both figures describe the state’s Exchange market as…
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Medicare says its prescription payment plan spreads drug costs across the year but does not lower them
Few federal benefit pages carry a warning about themselves, but Medicare’s description of its Prescription Payment Plan does. The option rearranges when drug bills come due, spreading a member’s out-of-pocket spending across January through December, and Medicare states that the rearranging changes nothing about the total. For anyone who has watched a pharmacy counter total…
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People drawing both Social Security and SSI are paid twice, SSI on the 1st and Social Security on the 3rd
Two deposits reach the bank account of a Social Security Administration beneficiary who also draws Supplemental Security Income, and neither follows the birth-date Wednesday calendar that most retirees and disability beneficiaries know. SSI is dated the 1st of the month. Social Security is dated the 3rd. SSA’s printed payment schedule states the rule in one…
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Social Security’s remaining 2026 birth-date payments land October 14, 21 and 28, then November 10, 18 and 25 and December 9, 16 and 23
Social Security checks do not all arrive on the same day. For most beneficiaries, the day of the month is fixed by a birth date, and the three payment days fall on Wednesdays. The remaining birth-date payments of 2026 run on October 14, 21 and 28, November 10, 18 and 25, and December 9, 16…
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Social Security’s pending hearings climbed from about 280,000 to about 360,000 in a year, the agency’s own figures show
Social Security’s hearing backlog grew by roughly 80,000 cases over the past year. The agency’s own performance page shows about 280,000 hearings pending in August 2025 and about 360,000 in August 2026, a jump of close to 29 percent. The same page reports gains elsewhere, including a phone line that now answers nearly every call,…
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One Social Security overpayment of $59,232 left $57,676 unpaid, the inspector general’s September audit found
A child-benefit overpayment that traces back to March 2015 had become a $59,232 debt by the time the Social Security Administration identified it in April 2024, and the agency’s own watchdog says $57,676 of that debt went unrepaid. The case appears in a September 2026 audit from the SSA Office of the Inspector General, which…
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An audit found 249,227 people who received Social Security child benefits were selected to have tax refunds taken
The people on the receiving end of a Social Security child-benefit overpayment are often children, or the adults who were paid on their behalf. A September 2026 audit by the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General counted 249,227 of them whose debts had reached the point where SSA’s system picked them for a…
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States must run Medicaid’s 80-hour-a-month work rule by January 1, and in most states December is the first month that counts
Medicaid expansion adults between 19 and 64 are about to find out what 80 hours a month looks like on paper. States must generally have the new work requirement running no later than January 1, 2027, and in most of them the first month that counts is December 2026, the month before. Nebraska and Montana…
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A quarter of Original Medicare patients will be drawn by ZIP code into a new drug payment model starting April 1
Roughly one in four people on Original Medicare Part B is about to be sorted into a new drug-pricing experiment by nothing more than the address on file with Medicare. Nobody signs up, nobody is asked, and as of today nobody outside CMS can say who is in. The model is final, it carries a…
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The FBI logged 201,266 fraud complaints from Americans 60 and older last year, with reported losses of $7.7 billion
Americans aged 60 and older filed 201,266 complaints with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center in the 2025 data year, and the people behind them reported $7.7 billion in losses. Both numbers describe that one age group only. They sit inside a report-wide total of 1,008,597 complaints and $20.877 billion in reported losses across every…