Main Street Dollars

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Every SNAP application asks about medical expenses, but many households skip past the question because they assume it will not change their benefit. For a household with a member age 60 or older, that assumption can leave real money on the table. Federal rules let those households deduct nearly every dollar they spend on medical…

A high income adds up to $91 a month to a Medicare drug plan on top of the premium

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Medicare’s prescription drug coverage comes with its own income-based surcharge, separate from the one attached to Part B, and it hits a different group of people for a different amount. For 2026, the top tier of that surcharge climbed to $91 a month, charged on top of whatever premium a person already pays for their…

Medicare’s Part B deductible rose $26 to $283 before coverage starts paying

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Most Medicare beneficiaries never see a bill for Part B the way they’d see one from a doctor’s office, because the premium is typically pulled straight out of a Social Security check before it ever hits a bank account. That makes it easy to miss when the underlying numbers actually change from one year to…

Medicare’s hospital deductible rose to $1,736, and it applies to each benefit period

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Starting January 1, 2026, Medicare’s Part A inpatient hospital deductible climbed to $1,736, up $60 from 2025’s $1,676. It shows up all at once, at the start of a stay, in the form of a deductible that resets every time a new benefit period begins. For 2026, that number moved higher again, and the way…

Earning more than $1,690 a month can end a Social Security disability check, or $2,830 for blind workers

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For someone receiving Social Security disability benefits and trying to return to work, one number decides whether a paycheck is safe and another decides whether it’s a threat to the whole benefit. Social Security’s 2026 update raised both: a non-blind worker who earns more than $1,690 in a month can be found capable of substantial…

Social Security stops taxing wages above $184,500 this year, a jump of $8,400

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A worker who crosses $184,500 in wages sometime this year will notice a line item on their pay stub change: the 6.2 percent Social Security tax that had been coming out of every paycheck simply stops. Social Security raised that wage ceiling by $8,400 for 2026, the biggest single-year dollar increase in the program’s history,…

Social Security’s phone wait fell from 34 minutes to under a minute

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For years, dialing Social Security’s national helpline meant clearing time off the calendar and settling in. The agency’s own performance data show that a caller who reached the 800 number in fiscal year 2024 waited an average of 34 minutes before an agent picked up. Social Security says that number has now fallen below a…

Supplemental Security Income pays up to $994, and $2,000 in savings ends it

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Supplemental Security Income is built for people who have almost nothing else to fall back on, and its two defining numbers tell that story every year. Social Security’s 2026 update raises the maximum federal SSI payment to $994 a month for an individual, or $1,491 for a couple. The other defining number in the program…

Medicaid members, not just Medicare Advantage patients, lose in-network Ohio State care under Humana on October 1

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in Government Programs

When Humana first announced it was heading toward a network split with Ohio State, most of the attention went to Medicare Advantage retirees who could lose access to the Wexner Medical Center. That framing left out a second, larger group facing the same October 1 deadline: Ohioans covered by Humana Healthy Horizons, the company’s Medicaid…

Original Medicare is testing AI prior authorization, and the companies reviewing claims are paid a share of the savings

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