Category: Benefits & Retirement
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Claiming Social Security before full retirement age costs a dollar of benefits for every two dollars earned over the yearly limit
Nearly every year, new retirees are surprised to learn that claiming Social Security before full retirement age doesn’t guarantee they keep every dollar of it if they’re still earning a paycheck. A rule called the retirement earnings test can withhold part of the benefit once outside income crosses a yearly limit, and the math shifts…
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VA made at least one processing error in about a third of the cases where it cut a veteran’s disability pay
When the Department of Veterans Affairs decides to reduce a veteran’s monthly disability check, federal regulation requires that the veteran get a warning first, with real time to respond before the money changes. A government watchdog review just found that guarantee failing far more often than it should. Looking at cases closed in 2024, investigators…
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Social Security starts matching federal pension records against 111 million Medicare files this month to test Extra Help claims
A data-sharing arrangement that quietly decides who keeps a valuable Medicare subsidy, and who loses it, is about to restart. Starting September 16, 2026, the Social Security Administration will compare civil service pension records from the Office of Personnel Management against its own Medicare files to check who is correctly receiving Extra Help with prescription…
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A federal 50 percent match on retirement savings starts with 2027 contributions and pays out in 2028
A retirement-savings benefit Congress approved years ago, and that nobody has been able to claim yet, is finally getting its plumbing built. The Treasury Department and the IRS issued guidance in August confirming that the Saver’s Match, a program enacted under the SECURE 2.0 Act, will begin with contributions made in 2027 and will not…
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Medicare’s GLP-1 bridge covers Wegovy and Zepbound at one monthly price no matter what a household earns
Starting July 1, 2026, Medicare began covering three specific weight-loss and metabolic drugs through a new program called Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, priced at a single flat monthly amount no matter what a beneficiary earns. It is not a blanket expansion of GLP-1 coverage to every Medicare enrollee who wants a prescription — it is a…
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Social Security’s overpayment rules reach a survivor’s lump-sum death payment and the deceased person’s estate
When a Social Security beneficiary dies while still owing the agency money from an earlier overpayment, that debt does not disappear along with them. The Social Security Administration follows a specific, ranked sequence for trying to recover the balance, and the sequence can reach a surviving spouse’s one-time death payment, reduce another family member’s own…
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Anyone still getting a Social Security check by mail can move to a prepaid card or ask Treasury for a waiver
A claim keeps circulating that Social Security paper checks stop for good on September 30, 2026. That is not what Social Security’s own written guidance says. The actual legal deadline for the shift to electronic federal benefit payments passed a year earlier, and the agency’s current public statement is only that it intends to finish…
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Negotiated Medicare prices on 15 more drugs take effect January 1
Medicare’s second round of drug price negotiations is now locked in, and the timeline is easy to blur with a newer, separate round that just started. The federal government finished bargaining with manufacturers over 15 widely prescribed drugs months ago, and those negotiated prices take effect for Medicare Part D and Part B plans on…
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Congress let the authority to replace food stamp benefits stolen by card skimmers expire, and it has not come back
Card skimming has not stopped, but the federal program that once reimbursed food stamp households for benefits stolen this way has. For nearly two years now, anyone whose SNAP card gets skimmed or cloned has had no guaranteed way to get that money back from the government, and nothing currently on the public record would…
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CMS names nine groups exempt from the Medicaid work rule, including veterans with a total disability rating
Nine categories of people will never have to prove they worked, trained or volunteered a single hour to keep Medicaid, once the program’s new community-engagement requirement takes hold. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services carved them out entirely in the interim final rule it issued June 1, 2026 — a permanent exemption, not a…
