Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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ACA health plan payments more than double in 2026 as a boosted tax credit expires
The extra help that held down Affordable Care Act premiums for the past several years is gone, and the difference is showing up as a much bigger monthly bill. The enhanced premium tax credits expired at the end of 2025, and the health-policy research group KFF estimates that the amount marketplace enrollees pay out of…
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A hospital leaving your Medicare Advantage network can push your out-of-pocket cap from $5,421 to $9,825
A Medicare Advantage plan comes with a promise most people rarely test: a hard ceiling on what a bad health year can cost you. What fewer members realize is that the ceiling has two heights, and which one applies depends on whether your care stays inside the plan’s network. When a hospital drops out of…
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Social Security can now withhold half your monthly check to recover an overpayment
If a letter from Social Security says you were overpaid, the amount it can take back out of your next check is no longer a small slice. For overpayment notices dated on or after April 25, 2025, the agency’s default is to hold back up to half of a retirement, survivors, or disability benefit each…
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Two children needed surgery after swallowing magnets, and 213,500 toy cube sets are being recalled for a full refund
There is a fair chance one of these sets is already in your house, in a bin under a bed or on the closet shelf with the wrapping paper. Goody King magnetic building cubes sold on Amazon between January 2024 and July 2026 for somewhere between $17 and $50, which made them an easy gift…
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Social Security just added 14 conditions to the list that fast-tracks a disability decision
Six to eight months. That, by Social Security’s own estimate, is how long a first decision on a disability application generally takes. For a household where the earner has already stopped working, that is not an administrative detail. It is most of a year with no paycheck and nothing arriving to replace it. On August…
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A subsidy holding down standalone Medicare drug-plan premiums ends after this year
Every fall, before open enrollment opens, your Medicare drug plan mails you an Annual Notice of Change. Most people skim it. This year, if you are in a standalone prescription drug plan rather than a Medicare Advantage plan with drug coverage, the premium line is worth a slower read, because a federal support that has…
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Employers could put $2,500 a year, tax-free, into the Trump Account of a worker’s child under proposed rules
Think of the list your employer hands you at open enrollment. Health plan, dental, vision, the 401(k) match, maybe a dependent care account and a commuter benefit. Treasury and the IRS have put out proposed regulations that would add another optional line to that menu: a contribution of up to $2,500 a year, excluded from…
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Bank of America customers who got a notice about the 2023 MOVEit breach can claim $100 with no proof by October 8
Somewhere in a drawer, in a folder of things you meant to deal with, or long since thrown out, there may be a letter from Ernst & Young telling you that your personal information turned up in a 2023 data breach. That piece of mail is the eligibility key to a $100 payment. It carries…
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An Arizona senior-living operator will pay $250,000 after the EEOC said it sent a worker alone with a resident who had harassed staff
Two hundred fifty thousand dollars is what an Arizona senior-living operator agreed to pay to close a federal sexual harassment lawsuit. The detail worth a working person’s attention is who the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said did the harassing: not a supervisor and not a coworker, but residents of the facility the employees were hired…
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Twenty-four Anaheim hotel workers will split $2.75 million after California said the hotel ignored a law requiring their rehire
Almost everyone who gets laid off assumes the job is gone and that whoever the company hires next is none of their business. In one slice of the California economy, that assumption is wrong and expensive. A covered hotel, event center, airport food operation or building services contractor that laid workers off for a pandemic-related…
