Category: Benefits & Retirement
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UHealth leaves UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage Preferred Care Network in Miami on January 1
Most contract fights between an insurer and a hospital system end with an announcement that everything is fine. This one ended with an announcement that most of it is fine. UnitedHealthcare and the University of Miami Health System renewed their relationship for commercial, individual and Medicaid coverage — and separately confirmed that one Medicare Advantage…
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Supplemental Security Income pays up to $994 a month, and the $2,000 savings limit has not moved since 1989
Two numbers govern Supplemental Security Income, and they have moved in opposite directions for nearly four decades. One of them is adjusted every January for inflation. The other has been frozen since the first Bush administration. The gap between them is the reason a recipient who manages to save a modest cushion can lose the…
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Medicare plans must mail every member a 2027 change letter by September 30
Between now and the end of September, a document arrives that decides more household money than almost anything else in the Medicare year, and it looks like junk mail. It is the Annual Notice of Change, and it is the first place a member learns what their own plan will cost and cover in 2027…
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Without a deal by August 31, NewYork-Presbyterian goes out of network for most UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage members, with active treatment covered to November 29
An extension is not an agreement, and the difference is about to matter for a large number of Medicare Advantage members in New York. NewYork-Presbyterian and UnitedHealthcare bought themselves another month at the end of July while talks continued. That month expires at the end of August, and the hospital system has published exactly what…
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A new Medicaid rule makes adults 19 to 64 log 80 hours a month, and states must have it running by January 1
Medicaid has a new condition attached to it, and it is not a proposal. A federal interim final rule took effect this summer requiring certain adults to demonstrate 80 hours a month of work or an approved substitute to keep their coverage. States have until January 1 to have the machinery running, which is why…
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A Medicare Advantage plan that drops you opens a 63-day window to buy Medigap without health questions
Medigap policies are normally sold with health questions attached. Outside a few protected windows, an insurer can ask about a person’s medical history, charge more because of it, or decline to sell at all. That is why a Medicare Advantage member who develops a serious condition often finds the door back to Original Medicare with…
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Washington cuts its share of SNAP administration in half on October 1, leaving states to cover 75 percent
Nothing about who qualifies for food assistance changes this fall. What changes is who pays for the staff that processes the applications. Beginning with the federal fiscal year that starts October 1, Washington’s share of the cost of administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program drops from half to a quarter, and states absorb the rest.…
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Claiming Social Security early while still working costs $1 of every $2 earned above $24,480
The most misunderstood rule in Social Security is the one that applies to people who claim a benefit and keep working. It is called the retirement earnings test, and it withholds part of a benefit when earnings run past a set line. It is also, in a way almost nothing else in the program is,…
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Medicaid’s retroactive coverage window drops to two months for people 65 and older on January 1
Medicaid has long carried a provision that assumes people do not apply for it at the moment they need it. Since 1972, coverage could reach back three months before the month a person applied, paying bills already incurred as long as the applicant would have qualified then. That backward-looking window is being cut, and the…
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Two waiting periods that slowed Medicare sales pitches are gone this enrollment season
For the past several years, a Medicare beneficiary who signed a form at an informational seminar had two days of quiet before an agent could legally pitch them a plan. That gap was built into federal regulation on the theory that a decision worth thousands of dollars a year should not be made in the…
