Category: Benefits & Retirement
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Extra Medicare pay for small rural hospitals expires December 31
Under current law, Medicare-Dependent Hospital payments and the temporary low-volume hospital adjustment expire December 31, 2026, unless Congress acts.
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A Medicare rule finalized this week requires all rehab therapy to start within 36 hours
CMS finalized a revision requiring that all — not just some — therapies begin within 36 hours of admission to an inpatient rehabilitation facility.
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The subsidy holding down standalone Medicare drug premiums ends after 2026
CMS is ending the Part D Premium Stabilization Demonstration after 2026. The 2027 national average monthly bid amount is $296.05, and plan premiums arrive in September.
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Medicare will make hospices hand every family the list of drugs they refuse to cover
CMS’s FY2027 hospice final rule makes the election statement addendum mandatory for everyone electing hospice, not just those who ask for it.
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Forty-three states must start enforcing Medicaid’s 80-hour work rule by January 1, and $580 in monthly pay satisfies it
CMS’s interim final rule requires 43 states and DC to implement Medicaid’s 80-hour community engagement requirement by January 1, 2027. Earning $580 a month satisfies it.
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Medicare’s 2027 Part B premium is not set yet, whatever the $209.50 figure suggests
Search for next year’s Medicare costs and the same number comes back from a dozen directions: $209.50 a month. It appears in blog posts, in benefits explainers, in at least one page whose headline flatly announces that the 2027 premiums have been released. They have not. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published…
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The Senior Citizens League projects a 3.8% raise for 2027, about $74 a month, but Social Security decides in October
A single figure has been moving through retirement newsletters and social feeds since the middle of July: a 3.8 percent Social Security raise for 2027, worth roughly $74 a month. The figure is real, the arithmetic behind it is ordinary, and the organization that produced it describes it accurately. What gets stripped out in the…
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Medicare will flag its top-rated nursing homes on Care Compare in September and give them lighter inspections
A family choosing a nursing home rarely gets much time to do it. A hospital discharge planner hands over a list, a parent needs a bed within days, and a set of star ratings on a federal website ends up carrying most of the weight in a decision that will shape both a person’s care…
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The VA’s claims backlog fell below 70,000 and a decision now averages 77.7 days
In 2013, seven out of every ten disability compensation and pension claims sitting at the Department of Veterans Affairs had been waiting more than 125 days. That share is now 11.6 percent. The count of claims stuck past that line dropped under 70,000 in early July, the first time it has been that low since…
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Medicare set the 2027 Part D base premium at $41.33 and will end a subsidy for standalone drug plans
On July 28, Medicare published one number that no beneficiary will ever see on a bill: $41.33. That is the base beneficiary premium for Part D drug coverage in 2027, and it is not a price. It is the statutory floor that every basic drug-plan premium is calculated from, and the figure the late-enrollment penalty…
