Medicare and Health Coverage

If your Medicare Part B premium feels like it's eating your Social Security check, a Medicare Savings Program might erase it entirely. These are state-administered programs that pay some or all of your Medicare costs if your income is low enough — and a surprising number of eligible people have…

If a single prescription fill ever hit you with a $400 or $800 bill at the pharmacy counter, Medicare has a free option that turns that into a smaller monthly payment instead. It's called the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan — M3P for short — and a lot of people on…

If your income crosses one of six specific lines, Medicare charges you more — sometimes a lot more — for the exact same Part B and Part D coverage everyone else gets. That surcharge is called IRMAA, and I get more confused emails about it than almost any other Medicare…

Medicare's open enrollment for 2027 coverage runs October 15 through December 7, 2026, and whatever you pick takes effect January 1, 2027. The 2027 plans themselves show up earlier: insurers can publish their premiums, drug lists and networks starting October 1, so you can shop for two weeks before you…

At least 3.8 million Medicare Advantage enrollees will have to shop for new coverage for 2027, according to a Modern Healthcare review of CMS data published October 1. That's well above the roughly 2.6 million people who lost their plan for 2026, which makes this the largest forced switch in…

If you get Medicaid through your state's Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansion, mark January 1, 2027. That's when the federal work requirement in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA) takes effect nationwide. Roughly 20 million adults in 43 states plus DC will need to show 80 hours a month of…

If you're on Medicare and drug costs are eating into a fixed income, there's a federal program that quietly covers a lot of that gap — and a meaningful number of people who'd qualify never apply, often because they've never heard of it or assume their income is too high.…

Here is a snapshot of the major changes to your 2026 Medicare coverage, primarily driven by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Following the snapshot are details that can help you manage your out-of-pocket health costs and refine your plan benefits. Part I: Key Changes to Prescription Drug (Part D) Costs…

If you bought ACA marketplace coverage for 2026 and your premium jumped — sometimes by hundreds of dollars a month — you're not imagining it. The enhanced premium tax credits that made Obamacare coverage cheap for millions of people expired at the end of 2025, and Congress hasn't renewed them.…

The headline number for 2026: the standard Medicare Part B premium is $202.90 per month, one of the larger year-over-year jumps in the program's history, with the Part B annual deductible at $283. For most retirees the premium comes straight out of the monthly Social Security check — which is…

FSAs don't get nearly the attention they deserve. Every year during open enrollment, I see people scroll past the FSA election screen without a second thought — and that's money left on the table. The basic idea is straightforward: you elect a dollar amount before the year starts, it comes…

If I had to pick one tax-advantaged account most people are underusing, it would be the HSA — and it's not particularly close. I've been contributing to one for years, and the more I've learned about how these accounts work, the more I think of them as a stealth retirement…

If you're covering an adult child on your employer health plan, you might assume there's some tax catch — extra income to report, a benefit that phases out, something. There isn't. This has been settled, stable federal law for well over a decade, and it's worth understanding clearly since it's…