Category: Benefits & Retirement
-
Aetna will pay brokers no commission on 123 Medicare Advantage plans in 2027
No plan is being canceled here, and no benefit is changing. What is being removed is the payment an insurance agent earns for enrolling someone. Aetna has told the third-party marketing organizations that supply its sales force that it will pay agents and brokers nothing on 123 of its Medicare Advantage plans for the 2027…
-
UnitedHealthcare says it is no longer negotiating, and University of Miami hospitals leave its Medicare Advantage network on January 1
UnitedHealthcare ended 14 months of contract talks with the University of Miami Health System on July 31 by signing a multi-year agreement that left one group of patients outside it. The deal secured in-network access at UHealth for people covered through employer plans, Affordable Care Act marketplace plans and Florida Medicaid. A different contract governs…
-
Medicaid’s new work rule lands January 1, and a letter starts a 30-day clock
Three dates now sit between a federal rulebook and a Medicaid card. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued its community engagement rule on June 1, 2026, and the regulations took effect on July 31, 2026. States must generally have the requirement running no later than January 1, 2027. After that, a single letter…
-
Medicare’s drug deductible jumps to $700 in January, with a $2,400 out-of-pocket cap
Seven hundred dollars is the figure that governs January. That is where the standard Medicare Part D deductible lands on January 1, 2027, up from $615 in the current year, and it is the amount of covered drug spending a beneficiary absorbs before a plan begins paying its share. The increase is $85, and it…
-
Social Security takes half your check 30 days after an overpayment notice
Recovery of a Social Security overpayment runs on a schedule rather than a negotiation. The agency sends a notice, asks for the money back in full, and waits a fixed period. If nothing arrives and nothing is filed, withholding begins on its own, at half of a Title II benefit, and continues every month until…
-
The bill to restore bigger ACA subsidies passed the House in January and has not moved in the Senate since February
The Senate has taken no action on H.R. 1834 since February 10, 2026, the day the bill was read a second time and placed on the legislative calendar under General Orders as Calendar No. 319. The House had passed it a month earlier, 230 to 196. More than six months later, that February entry is…
-
Social Security added 14 fast-track conditions to its disability list
The group reached by this change is a narrow one: people applying for Social Security disability benefits whose medical file names one of 14 diagnoses the agency added on August 11, 2026, and the families waiting alongside them for an answer. For that group the change is about calendar time rather than dollars. The additions…
-
The subsidy holding down stand-alone Medicare drug plan premiums ends after this year, and 2027 plans are priced without it
No 2027 premium has been published for any individual Medicare drug plan, and none will be until federal officials release the plan landscape in September. What has already been settled is a subtraction. On July 28, 2026, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that the Part D Premium Stabilization Demonstration, the voluntary program…
-
Valley Health goes out of network for UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage on October 1, two weeks before Medicare’s enrollment window opens
Three dates now sit within a six-week span for older adults in Virginia and West Virginia who get their care at Valley Health and carry a UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage card. The contract between the health system and the insurer terminates on September 30, 2026. Valley Health’s hospitals, facilities and physicians become out of network for…
-
Nearly a quarter of hospital finance leaders say they have already dropped or narrowed a Medicare Advantage contract
A Black Book Research flash poll of 112 hospital finance leaders found 23.1 percent of Medicare Advantage-exposed organizations have already cut a contract. It is not a probability sample.
