Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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Social Security cut average field office wait times 30 percent while serving 25 million visitors
The Social Security Administration marked its 91st anniversary on August 14 with a data dump most agencies would rather not publish: exactly how long people are waiting when they show up in person. This year, for the first time in a while, the numbers moved in the visitor’s favor. Nearly 25 million people walked into…
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Social Security announces the 2027 cost-of-living raise on October 14
Every fall, one government release date determines how much bigger — or smaller — the raise will be for the roughly 75 million Americans who collect Social Security or Supplemental Security Income. That date isn’t set by the Social Security Administration deciding when it feels ready. It’s locked to a Bureau of Labor Statistics data…
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Medicare Advantage plans no longer have to tell members which extra benefits went unused
Every Medicare Advantage plan with supplemental extras — dental cleanings, an eyewear allowance, a grocery card — has always counted on enrollees to notice, on their own, whether they were actually using what they paid into the plan for. A rule finalized earlier this year had been set to change that by forcing plans to…
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An Iowa hospital system now takes only Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Medigold and Wellmark
In Clarion, Iowa, population under 3,000, the local hospital’s list of accepted Medicare Advantage insurers fits on an index card. Since the start of 2026, Iowa Specialty Hospitals and Clinics has stopped seeing non-emergency patients whose coverage falls outside four insurers, a narrower list than almost any other hospital system tracked nationally this year. For…
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UnitedHealthcare drops prior authorization on about 1,700 procedure codes October 1
Millions of UnitedHealthcare members who have waited days for a doctor’s office to get a procedure cleared got a specific answer this week: about 1,700 procedure and diagnostic codes will no longer need that step, starting October 1. The change touches commercial, Medicare Advantage and Affordable Care Act plans alike, and it lands squarely in…
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A Medicare Advantage flex card must now clear at the register and expires with the plan year
Tens of millions of Medicare Advantage enrollees carry a small plastic card loaded with an allowance for groceries, dental work, vision exams, or over-the-counter items. For years, many of those cards behaved like ordinary prepaid debit cards, swiping through checkout with little scrutiny over what actually landed in the cart. Two changes finalized by federal…
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A Trans Union settlement pays $100 automatically to people wrongly marked as bankrupt
Roughly 57,000 people had a strange problem on their credit report: a bankruptcy remark attached to one of their accounts, even though no public bankruptcy filing existed anywhere in their name. A class action against Trans Union alleged the credit bureau sold those inaccurate reports to lenders and other third parties for years, and a…
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A stopgap passed by Congress would fund food stamps and the government through December 11
Roughly six weeks before the last stopgap was set to run out, the Senate and House both voted to keep federal money flowing rather than let a shutdown collide with the fall calendar. The bill covers everything from food assistance to flood insurance, and it does it by extending current funding levels rather than writing…
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A White House plan would freeze federal pay next year, canceling a 3.1 percent raise
Every autumn, a decades-old formula quietly tells federal agencies how much General Schedule employees are due to see in their paychecks the following January. For 2027, that formula pointed toward a 3.1 percent across-the-board raise on top of a locality pay adjustment averaging 20.6 percent nationwide. On August 26, the White House sent Congress an…
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Doxo will pay $2.1 million over search ads posing as customers’ own bill pages
Typing a company’s name into a search engine to find its bill-pay page sounds like the safe way to handle a utility bill. According to the Federal Trade Commission, doing exactly that with certain searches for years led consumers straight to Doxo, a third-party payment platform that the agency says dressed itself up to look…
