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SSA Experts: Don’t Believe Negative Hype About Americans’ Retirement Finances
Conventional wisdom has it that most Americans are financially ill-prepared for retirement. But that’s not true, say Sylvester Schieber, former chairman of the Social Security Advisory Board, and Andrew Biggs, former principal deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. “The story pushed…
No new legislation, but still higher taxes
This time last year, I spent a good amount of time warning you about the higher taxes that came as a result of The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. 2013 saw some major changes, and if you didn’t plan…
Retirement: Get financial help for caring for parents
If you’re paying your parents’ bills, don’t overlook these sources of money and tax breaks. Medicaid. Medicare provides limited coverage for skilled nursing or rehabilitation services after a hospital stay. It doesn’t cover custodial care, such as help with bathing, dressing…
New England Editorial Roundup
For five years, cultural anthropologist Caitrin Lynch immersed herself in the working environment of Vita NeedleCompany in Needham, Mass., a family-owned business that makes a practice of hiring older workers, so many in fact that the median age of their employees is 74. Vita Needle is a…
The Pitfalls of Applying for Medicare
Roughly 3.65 million Americans will turn 65 this year and become eligible for Medicare. But be warned: There’s nothing simple about signing up for the government’s health-care insurance program. “Medicare is complicated,” says Paula Muschler, operations manager of the Allsup Medicare…
How Inflation Robs Social Security Recipients And Other Taxpayers
The government creates inflation by printing money. Should it profit from that activity? A third of a century ago, a decision was made that in one important respect it should not. President Ronald Reagan pushed through legislation that indexed tax brackets…
Thoughts on a Center-Left Entitlements Strategy: How we Might Shape Social Security and Medicare for the Future
In a forum such as this, authors can dispense with many of the usual preliminaries. I take it we agree that suitably structured and regulated markets generate wealth more effectively than other economic systems but do not reliably produce either…
House Doc Fix Bill Would Cost $121 Billion, CBO Says
The Congressional Budget Office Jan. 24 estimated the cost of a House Ways and Means Committee proposal to overhaul the Medicare physician payment formula at $121 billion over 10 years. The committee approved the bill (H.R. 2810) in December. Earlier CBO estimates placed…
Senate bill seeks to amend Medicare hospital stay rule
A U.S. senator is pushing his colleagues to change a law that can leave retirees and others on Medicare on the hook for huge hospital bills. Under the rule, Medicare won’t pay for skilled nursing care after a hospital stay that…
Are America’s seniors secretly rich?
That’s the implication of an op-ed in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, which says that figures on retiree incomes used by the Social Security Administration systematically misses as much as 60% of the income that seniors receive. That income, they say, is IRA…