Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Medicare says TrumpRx coupon prices do not count toward a Medicare deductible
A cash discount at the pharmacy counter and a paid insurance claim can produce the same total on a receipt, but Medicare treats the two very differently behind the scenes. Federal consumer guidance spells out what happens when someone enrolled in Medicare uses TrumpRx, the government’s prescription discount portal, instead of running a purchase through…
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Social Security can pull wages straight from payroll, but only for people who sign form SSA-8240
Reporting a paycheck to Social Security every month is one of the most common ways Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance recipients trigger an accidental overpayment notice — a missed call, a rounded figure, a pay stub that never gets mailed in time. Since April 2025, Social Security has offered a way around…
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Social Security and the federal retirement agency began a data match on September 16 over Medicare Extra Help
A little-noticed notice in the Federal Register set a fixed date for two federal agencies to start comparing millions of records against each other, built around a subsidy that officials say many retirees never get around to claiming. The Social Security Administration confirmed it would begin checking civil service payment data supplied by the Office…
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Windfall elimination caused $931 million of Social Security computation overpayments in five years
Across five fiscal years of payment-accuracy reviews, one now-defunct rule kept surfacing as the single biggest reason Social Security miscalculated a retirement or disability benefit. The finding sits inside a routine payment-accuracy audit most beneficiaries will never read, yet it explains why some overpayment notices arriving today can trace back to a formula Congress eliminated…
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Social Security estimates about $2 billion a year in SSI overpayments are tied to money in a bank account
Money sitting in a savings or checking account can quietly end a household’s eligibility for Supplemental Security Income, the federal program that pays older, blind, and disabled Americans with little income and few resources. According to the Social Security Administration’s own inspector general, the agency’s estimates put the yearly cost of these account-related mistakes at…
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A wage alert sat unworked for seven years, and Social Security can only bill back 24 months of it
Inside the Social Security Administration, an earnings alert is a routine flag: income reported to the Internal Revenue Service does not match what a Supplemental Security Income recipient told the agency, and a caseworker is supposed to sort out the difference. Most alerts close within weeks. One, according to an audit from the agency’s Office…
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Oracle starts paying its $115 million tracking settlement September 21, and the claim window closed in 2024
A federal privacy case that Oracle America spent nearly four years contesting is now moving into its payment phase. Settlement administrator Angeion Group has scheduled the release of funds from a $115 million pool beginning September 21, 2026, closing out litigation over how Oracle’s advertising business collected and sold personal data. The people who will…
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Losing a Medicare Advantage plan opens a 63-day window to buy a Medigap policy no insurer can refuse
A cancellation notice from a Medicare Advantage insurer rarely explains what it hands the recipient along with the bad news. Buried in that letter is a narrow, one-time right to buy a Medicare Supplement, known as Medigap, without answering a single health question — a right that disappears if the paperwork misses its deadline. The…
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The Medicaid work rule reaches 43 states on January 1, and a missed letter starts a 30-day clock
Beginning January 1, 2027, a new federal requirement will decide whether millions of low-income adults keep Medicaid coverage or lose it over paperwork most of them have never seen before. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wrote the requirement directly into federal regulation rather than leaving it to individual state legislatures, and it reaches…
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A second car can end an SSI check, and a quarter of recipients audited had one Social Security never knew about
Social Security relies on a promise: applicants and recipients report what they own, and the agency accepts what they say. A federal audit released this month tested that promise against 208 real case files and found it breaking down more often than officials might like, with something as ordinary as a second car sitting at…