Main Street Dollars

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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…

UnitedHealthcare of Wisconsin was overpaid $46.9 million and asked the watchdog to withdraw its recommendations

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in Medicare

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…

Social Security issued $863 million in large back payments without the required second review

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in Social Security

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…

A surviving spouse who was part of an eligible couple can claim an unpaid SSI payment at any time, other survivors get 24 months

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in Social Security

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…

Some people who asked Social Security to explain an overpayment have waited more than 900 days

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in Social Security

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…

Five years of recovery from a substance use disorder ends a Medicaid work-rule exemption

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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…

Medicaid will use a diagnosis code, not a doctor’s note, to decide who is too sick to work

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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,…

The same savings limit that decides food stamp eligibility also defines a disqualifying lottery win

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USDA’s Food and Nutrition Administration resets several dollar figures each fall, and the fiscal year 2027 update carries an unusual twist. Starting October 1, 2026, the asset limit that most households must stay under to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits holds at $3,000, while the limit for households with a member age 60 or…

USDA opened a comment window on eighteen states’ food stamp soda bans that closes October 15

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Administration published eighteen separate notices in the Federal Register on September 15, 2026, each one inviting written comment on a different state’s plan to change what a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program card can buy. The states run from Montana and Idaho to Arkansas, Utah and more than…

Montana’s new limits on what a food stamp card buys are delayed to November 1

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