Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Trump’s ban on certain Canadian alcohol and dairy starts September 29, and the product list gained all-terrain vehicles on September 15
Two changes to Canadian trade rules land on different dates this month, and both trace back to the same legal authority. Import bans on certain Canadian alcoholic beverages and dairy products take effect September 29, 2026, turning what has been a steep tariff into an outright prohibition on those goods entering the United States. A…
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Novitas improperly paid $19.5 million for Medicare services in nursing homes
A newly released federal audit shows how the private company that processes Medicare’s paperwork across much of the country let millions of dollars in incorrect nursing-home billing go through unchecked for a full year. Investigators reviewed a sample of the specific kind of Medicare Part B claims filed on behalf of people living in nursing…
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Methodist Hospital did not agree to repay the $12.4 million a federal audit says Medicare overpaid it
A federal audit released this month found that Methodist Hospital received at least $12.4 million in Medicare overpayments over a two-year stretch of billing, and the Hospital has told investigators it does not owe most of that money. The finding comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, which…
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Medicare’s 2027 premium still does not exist three weeks before enrollment opens
Medicare’s annual enrollment window is approaching, and millions of households will soon start comparing plans for next year. One number they will not have in hand yet is the 2027 Part B premium, deductible or income-related monthly adjustment amounts, the figures that determine what enrollees actually pay each month starting in January. The Centers for…
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UnitedHealthcare of Wisconsin was overpaid $46.9 million and asked the watchdog to withdraw its recommendations
UnitedHealthcare of Wisconsin, Inc., the company behind Medicare Advantage contract H5253, submitted diagnosis codes to the federal government that a new watchdog review says the medical records did not support. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General checked a sample of enrollee cases and found most of the codes it tested…
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Social Security issued $863 million in large back payments without the required second review
Hundreds of millions of dollars in large Supplemental Security Income underpayments left the Social Security Administration without the second review meant to catch mistakes before the money went out the door. That is the conclusion of a new audit by the agency’s own Office of the Inspector General, which pulled a sample of payments Social…
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A surviving spouse who was part of an eligible couple can claim an unpaid SSI payment at any time, other survivors get 24 months
When a Supplemental Security Income recipient dies still owed money by the Social Security Administration, who can collect it and how long they have to ask hinges on one narrow, technical fact: whether their surviving spouse was a full member of an “eligible couple” with them in the month of death. That single distinction, buried…
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Some people who asked Social Security to explain an overpayment have waited more than 900 days
Anyone who receives a Social Security overpayment notice is allowed to do one thing before paying anything back: ask the agency, in writing, to explain how the number was calculated. Tracing what happens after that request took auditors months. The answer, laid out in a new inspector general audit, is that the process meant to…
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Five years of recovery from a substance use disorder ends a Medicaid work-rule exemption
A federal rule now in effect ties continued Medicaid coverage for millions of adults to a monthly work or activity requirement, but it carves out an exemption for people the government classifies as medically frail. Guidance the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted on September 8, 2026 spells out exactly how that exemption applies…
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Medicaid will use a diagnosis code, not a doctor’s note, to decide who is too sick to work
Starting no later than January 1, 2027, states running Medicaid’s new work requirement will decide who is too sick to comply largely by matching a diagnosis code already sitting in a claims file, not by waiting on a letter from a treating doctor. The code comes out of the 2025 Working Families Tax Cut law,…