Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Household electricity is projected to average 18.6 cents a kilowatt-hour next year, up from 16.5 cents in 2024
The average U.S. household is on track to pay more for electricity through the rest of the decade, according to updated federal forecasting released this month. Residential power prices climbed from 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2024 to an estimated 17.3 cents in 2025, and federal energy analysts now expect the increases to continue in…
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California diesel averaged $8.039 a gallon in the week ending September 14
Diesel fuel in California averaged $8.039 a gallon for the week ending September 14, 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly retail price survey. That figure sits well above both the national picture and the wider West Coast region the state belongs to, and the distance between them has been widening for more…
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Diesel costs 68 percent more than a year ago, and almost everything in a grocery store arrives on a truck
Diesel fuel has climbed sharply over the past year, and the increase touches far more than what shows up at a truck stop pump. Nearly every packaged, fresh, or frozen item that reaches a grocery store shelf spends at least part of its trip on the back of a truck, so a move this size…
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Some Supplemental Security Income has sat unpaid on Social Security’s books for 18 years
A new watchdog report on the Social Security Administration has surfaced a backlog of Supplemental Security Income payments that were due years ago and still have not gone out. The agency’s own Office of the Inspector General sampled the underpayments sitting in SSA’s records and found that some of the oldest unresolved cases, involving living…
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Employers expect the biggest jump in health coverage costs since 2003, and most large ones will pass more of it on
Mercer’s latest look at employer health costs lands with an uncomfortable number attached. The consulting firm’s preliminary survey of more than 1,800 U.S. employers projects that total health benefit cost per employee will climb 8.2% on average in 2027, the largest year-over-year increase since 2003, even after employers have already trimmed their plans to hold…
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Eighteen states now have an approved date for restricting what a food stamp card buys
A federal tracking page run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Administration lists twenty-three approved state waivers letting SNAP agencies block certain purchases, from candy to energy drinks, on the government benefit card. Read literally, that page supports a narrower number: only eighteen of those twenty-three rows carry a live start date…
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The VA is suspending life insurance premiums for 457,000 veterans for three months
The Department of Veterans Affairs will stop collecting premiums from more than 457,000 Veterans’ Group Life Insurance policyholders for three months this fall and winter, the agency announced on September 16, 2026. It is the first premium holiday in the history of the VGLI program, which lets veterans keep term life insurance coverage after they…
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Medicare will add heart failure and lung disease to a program its Advantage enrollees cannot join
Medicare beneficiaries managing heart failure or a lung condition such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are getting a new coverage option, but only if they are enrolled in Original Medicare. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services confirmed on September 15, 2026, that it will widen an existing chronic-care program to cover four additional conditions…
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The IRS mailed more than 3.1 million nonfiler notices last year after mailing none two years earlier
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration counted the mail the Internal Revenue Service sent to taxpayers who had not filed a return, and the swing was stark: zero notices in fiscal year 2023, 1.68 million in fiscal year 2024, and 3.16 million in fiscal year 2025. Almost the entire increase traces back to one…
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Nearly half of Social Security’s overpayment letters did not follow the agency’s own notice rules
For nearly two years, auditors checked Social Security’s overpayment letters against the notice rules the agency wrote for itself. A large share of those letters did not measure up. The review covered notices sent to people the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program had already overpaid, not any other benefit type. Auditors pulled a random…