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Posts Tagged With ‘ Kim Blanton ’

 
Broadband in High Disability Areas is Subpar
February 23rd, 2023

The Internet has become a necessity in our modern society. Yet 42 million Americans live in areas of the country where the connections to technology are subpar or, in extreme cases, nonexistent. At the same time, federal and state governments are increasingly relying on people to interact with them online. This mismatch between a growing reliance on the Internet and a lack of easy access is a problem for one especially vulnerable population: people with disabilities. Without access to a fast reliable Internet connection, it can be very difficult to apply online to Social Security for disability... Continue Reading

February 23rd, 2023
Burden of High Rents Surged during COVID
February 21st, 2023

As the bad first two years of the pandemic recede in the rear-view mirror, a new report reminds us how tough things got for renters. In 2021, a record 21.6 million U.S. families were paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent, which is the real estate industry’s benchmark for people whose housing costs have become a financial burden. That amounts to just under half of all renter households who were struggling during COVID – very close to the high reached during the Great Recession. And the vast majority of the 1.2 million increase from 2020’s level was in the group that struggles... Continue Reading

February 21st, 2023
The Case for Signing a Power of Attorney
February 16th, 2023

The best reason to set up a power of attorney for yourself or an elderly family member is to avoid a far more contentious and expensive alternative later: guardianship. Jonathan Williams A power of attorney becomes urgent if an elderly family member is showing early signs of dementia. “You want to run, not walk, to get that done because capacity tends not to get better,” said Jonathan Williams, an attorney with the Clarity Legal Group in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area. “Having good legal documents in place, if the person has the ability to execute them, can be helpful later on,” he said.... Continue Reading

February 16th, 2023
Mental Health Care is Crucial Disability Need
February 14th, 2023

During the pandemic, calls to mental health hotlines soared. People in emotional distress learned that psychologists were booked months in advance or were completely unavailable. While COVID dramatized the need for mental health treatment generally, new research reveals how important being treated is to people with disabilities. Isaac Swensen and Carly Urban at Montana State University found that ready access to outpatient care slightly increases applications for disability benefits by working-age people under Social Security’s insurance program and by poor and marginally employed workers under... Continue Reading

February 14th, 2023
Health Insurance Increases Latinx Wealth
February 9th, 2023

About one out of every five Latinx workers in this country lacks health insurance. The uninsured ratio rises to one in four in the states that have chosen not to expand their Medicaid programs to more low-income workers under the Affordable Care Act. The motivation for Josefina Flores Morales’ new research is that there’s more to health insurance than just medical care. It is also critical to individuals’ financial health, she argues, and broader insurance coverage in the Latinx community is an underappreciated way that the vast wealth gap between them and non-Latinx White workers could be... Continue Reading

February 9th, 2023
Boomerang Kids Don’t Derail Their Parents
February 7th, 2023

A popularized image of parents who struggle when adult children move back home is not shaping up as an accurate picture of the arrangements. Unemployment, divorce, college graduation – adult children in their 20s and 30s move back into a parent’s home for many reasons. And the parents can have all sorts of reactions, good and bad, to their boomeranging kids. Some parents get stressed out by young adults who return home because they need financial support. Others welcome having the kids back to pad the empty nest, help with household chores, or help pay the bills. The return home isn’t necessarily... Continue Reading

February 7th, 2023
Student Debt Plan Helps Black Retirees
February 2nd, 2023

For the sliver of retirees who are far behind in paying their own or their children’s student loans, Social Security can withhold part of their benefits to pay the loans back. But college has gotten much more expensive since the baby boomers attended, and loan delinquencies are higher among working people and especially Black Americans. When today’s Black workers retire, their estimated household delinquency rate will be 5.4 percent – well more than double the rate for White and Hispanic retirees. The question is how withholding Social Security benefits will impact the financial security... Continue Reading

February 2nd, 2023
Employers Routinely Avoid Paying Overtime
January 31st, 2023

Walk into a restaurant, retail store or hotel, and you might encounter a manager who seems to be doing the same tasks as the people he’s managing. Maybe you’re in one of those jobs. A lawsuit by employees against a retail store revealed how meaningless the title of manager can be: the store managers were “stocking shelves, running cash registers, unloading trucks and cleaning parking lots, floors and bathrooms.” Hardly the types of responsibilities that go with overseeing one’s coworkers. The employees were suing for overtime pay under a Depression-era federal law to receive back pay... Continue Reading

January 31st, 2023
Middle Class Gets the Most from Medicare
January 26th, 2023

This is a fact of retirement life: older Americans haven’t paid as much into Medicare and Medicaid as government spends on their healthcare and nursing home stays. But it is middle-class retirees who get the most out of the system, according to a new study. Middle-income households receive about $230,000 to $260,000 more in Medicare and Medicaid benefits, on average, during their retirement years than the total amount they’ve paid in. Their contributions consist of the Medicare payroll and income taxes deducted from workers’ paychecks, the portion of their federal and state income taxes devoted... Continue Reading

January 26th, 2023
Medicare to Cover 3 New Dental Procedures
January 24th, 2023

“Is it medically necessary for a person to be able to chew?” Dr. Lisa Simon, a physician and dentist at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, asks. This is a serious question for older Americans in fragile health. I know a 93-year-old man whose teeth problems make it extremely difficult for him to eat meat and many other foods on the dinner table. Two-thirds of retirees do not have dental insurance, which means they may decide to forgo getting expensive dental care. The importance of dental care to nutrition and health is also an equity issue for older Blacks and low-income retirees, who are... Continue Reading

January 24th, 2023