Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Two in ten Medicare Advantage members must re-shop their plan by December 7
Medicare Advantage members heading into this fall’s Open Enrollment have a headline number worth reading carefully. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says roughly eight in ten Advantage members can stay in their current plan in 2027 at the same or a lower premium. The arithmetic runs the other way for the remainder: about…
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Medicare will randomly assign one in four Original Medicare patients to a new mandatory drug payment model starting January 1
A new mandatory payment model for Part B drugs is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2027, and roughly one in four people in Original Medicare will be placed in it through random selection. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized the program, called the Global Benchmark for Efficient Drug Pricing (GLOBE) Model, on…
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The FBI counted nearly 61,000 complaints and more than $1.6 billion lost to callers posing as police
A telephone number that looks local, a voice that claims a badge, and a demand to pay before hanging up: the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has now counted what that script cost. Between January 2025 and July 2026 the center logged nearly 61,000 complaints involving scammers who pose as law enforcement or other officials,…
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The FTC is re-sending AT&T and Ring refunds by Zelle to people who never cashed a check
Zelle has joined checks, prepaid cards and PayPal as a way the Federal Trade Commission returns money, and two older cases are now using it. The agency’s pages show AT&T data-throttling refunds going out by Zelle in August 2026 and Ring refunds in July 2026. In both cases the transfers are aimed at people who…
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Shoppers in 23 states and Washington, D.C. can claim from a $117 million pork price-fixing fund by October 29
Where a shopper bought pork decides whether a claim on the $117 million price-fixing fund is possible at all. The administrator limits the class to 23 states and Washington, D.C., covers purchases made between June 28, 2014 and June 30, 2018, and closes the claim window on October 29, 2026, which leaves four weeks. A…
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Apple’s Siri settlement covers seven iPhone models bought between June 2024 and March 2025
Seven iPhone models are covered by Apple’s Siri settlement, as long as the phone was bought in the United States between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025. The $250 million fund pays per device rather than per person, and the administrator’s claim deadline is December 21, 2026. One claim per eligible iPhone. The payment…
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No tariff dividend check exists, and no agency has published a payment page or an eligibility rule
A search of the federal government’s own pages turns up no tariff dividend check. No agency has put up a payment page, an application, an eligibility rule or a payment schedule for a roughly $2,000 per-person tariff payment, and the pages read for this article do not mention one. That is a statement about what…
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Taxpayers in declared disaster areas now have until November 2 or February 1 to file
Two postponed filing dates now sit on the IRS disaster relief list: November 2, 2026 and February 1, 2027. Which one applies depends on the declared area where a taxpayer lives, runs a business or keeps the records needed to file. Many of the declarations cover named counties, not whole states. Which areas carry November…
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GAO says IRS screens stopped $88 billion in invalid refunds while the agency still has no antifraud strategy
Tax cheating costs the federal government somewhere between $116 billion and $304 billion a year, according to an estimate from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released September 25. The same report credits an IRS screening system with blocking $88 billion in invalid refund payments from 2018 through 2024. GAO also found that the agency has…
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Child support, a state tax bill or a federal debt can take a refund before it arrives
A federal refund can shrink for two reasons that look alike on a bank statement: the IRS changed the return, or Treasury applied part of the refund to a debt. For the second kind, the IRS names four categories: past-due child support, federal agency non-tax debts, state income tax obligations and certain state unemployment compensation…