A tax-free monthly benefit exists for the surviving families of veterans who died from a service-connected illness or injury, and many of them never claim it. The program, called Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, can be a meaningful and lasting source of income for a surviving spouse. Knowing it exists, and who qualifies, is the first…

Families often hear a frightening version of Medicaid estate recovery: that the state will take the family home to pay for a parent’s nursing care. The reality is more protective than the rumor. Federal rules require states to try to recover long-term-care costs, but they also shield a surviving spouse who still lives in the…

A major change to Medicaid arrives in 2027, and it is as much about paperwork as it is about work. Under the 2025 federal law, many adults on Medicaid will have to document that they are working or doing qualifying activities and reprove their eligibility every six months instead of once a year. The new…

A lot of older Americans on a tight income assume there is nothing beyond their Social Security check, and they are often wrong. Supplemental Security Income is a separate federal benefit that pays a monthly amount to people who are 65 or older, blind, or disabled and who have very little income and few assets.…

For millions of families who buy groceries with a SNAP card, the list of what the benefit can pay for is about to get shorter. A wave of state waivers approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture will bar SNAP from covering soda and candy, and after a court trimmed the list, roughly eighteen states…

For many families, the family home is the single most valuable thing a parent leaves behind. What often goes unmentioned is that if that parent spent years in a nursing home on Medicaid, the state may come looking to be repaid out of the home’s value after death. It is called estate recovery, it is…

Nearly every state is about to attach a work test to Medicaid, and one of the deadlines has almost nothing to do with the enrollees themselves. Before the new requirement takes hold in 44 states by the start of 2027, states were handed a narrow window to warn their members that the rules are coming…

A wave of paperwork is about to decide whether millions of American households keep help buying groceries. A 2025 law rewrote the work rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and one of the most detailed analyses of the change estimates that more than 5 million people now live in households at risk of losing…

The federal government has launched a website, TrumpRx.gov, that the administration says will let people see and compare cash prices for prescription drugs — and, in some cases, buy them directly at lower prices than they might pay otherwise. The platform was announced earlier this year and has been expanding since, with the administration positioning…

A pair of Medicaid changes that take hold in 2027 could quietly cost millions of Americans their health coverage, not because they are ineligible, but because keeping it will take more paperwork than many can manage. Starting January 1, 2027, a large group of adults on Medicaid will have to prove they are working, studying,…