Main Street Dollars

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A federal safety agency is telling nearly 377,000 households to unplug and throw away a combination natural gas and carbon monoxide detector immediately, warning that it may not sound an alarm during a life-threatening gas leak. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued the warning on August 20 for the 4-in-1 Plug-In Natural Gas and…

Employer health costs are set to rise 8.2 percent next year, the steepest jump since 2003

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in Insurance

Workers with job-based health insurance are bracing for the steepest premium increase in more than two decades. A new survey from benefits consultant Marsh projects that employer health plan costs will rise 8.2% in 2027 even after companies trim benefits to soften the blow, the largest such increase since 2003. For a household already juggling…

Social Security is finishing off paper checks this year, and Treasury says a check is 16 times likelier to be stolen

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in Social Security

Social Security says it plans to stop mailing paper checks to beneficiaries altogether this year, closing out a shift that began under federal law more than a year ago. For the shrinking number of retirees, spouses, and survivors who still get a check in the mailbox each month, that means the payment method itself is…

Six months of war has added about $1,250 to a typical household’s gasoline and heating bills

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in Utilities & Energy

Six months after the United States and Israel launched military strikes against Iran, the war’s economic fallout has moved well past headlines about the Strait of Hormuz. It has landed in the household budget: at the gas pump today, and in the heating bill this winter. A new analysis from the association representing the state…

Medicare Advantage plans are set to collect $13 billion more next year while insurers keep cutting plans

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in Medicare

The federal government has finalized how much it will pay private Medicare Advantage insurers for next year, and the total is bigger than most of the plans it funds. That increase is landing at the same time several of the country’s largest insurers are pulling Medicare Advantage plans out of counties across the country, shrinking…

UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage members lose every Fairview doctor and hospital on January 1

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in Medicare

UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage members who count on Fairview for their care are about to lose access to every clinic, hospital and doctor in the system. Fairview Health Services says it will stop scheduling those patients starting January 1, 2027, ending a Medicare Advantage relationship that has grown increasingly strained over billing and coverage disputes. Anyone…

Junior enlisted troops are set for a 7 percent raise in January under the same pay plan

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in Jobs & Wages

The same White House document that would freeze civilian federal pay for 2027 does the opposite for the youngest members of the armed forces. Buried in the back half of an alternative pay plan built around holding General Schedule salaries flat sits a directed increase for military basic pay, and the biggest number in it…

Workers’ share of what they produce fell to 52.9 percent, the lowest since 1947

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in Jobs & Wages

The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps a single number that answers a question most paychecks can’t: out of everything the economy actually produces, how much of it ends up in workers’ pockets rather than somewhere else. That number just hit its lowest point in a series that stretches back to 1947, and the agency that…

The Education Department will use Social Security disability records to find loans it can erase

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in Credit & Debt

The Department of Education published a notice on August 25 re-establishing a data-sharing arrangement with the Social Security Administration that flags federal student loan borrowers the SSA has already determined are disabled. Borrowers won’t have to track down a doctor’s certification or mail in a paper application to start the process — the match is…

The FDIC counts $326.7 billion in unrealized losses still sitting on bank balance sheets

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