Posts Tagged With ‘ retired ’

Here’s something you should know about Medicare Advantage plans: the vast majority of these insurance policies require prior approval before a person can receive some medical treatments and services. Historically, that was not the case, and prior authorizations are still very unusual for people who are enrolled in original Medicare and a Medigap supplement. But in the case of Medicare Advantage plans, physicians submitted more than 35 million requests for prior authorization to insurers in 2021, and more than 2 million of them – or about 6 percent – were fully or partially denied, according... Continue Reading

I recently retired and found my productivity quickly went from 110% to barely hitting 8% on a good day. In all fairness, I contracted COVID two days after packing up my desk and spent the next four in bed. The first time I had COVID in December of 2020, before I was eligible for a vaccine, my only symptom was back pain. At that time I was put through a myriad of tests—from peeing in a cup to be sure I didn’t have a UTI, to a PET scan to check for a reoccurrence of lymphoma—only to discover it wasn’t The Big C thankfully, but The Big C-O-V-I-D. This Christmas, despite being a human pin cushion... Continue Reading

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

Anyone who has lived paycheck to paycheck is familiar with the headache of overdraft charges. Due to a slight miscalculation at the end of a tough month, there isn’t enough money in the account to cover a check. The bank pays the check but charges an overdraft fee that drains money out of the account. A negative balance would trigger an overdraft fee on a different check or cause it to bounce. Of course people should manage their finances responsibly. But the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) argues that older people in particular are at a disadvantage, and perhaps banks should... Continue Reading

The purpose of the 2020 restrictions on older people’s activities during COVID – whether voluntary or government enforced – were crucial: keeping them alive as the deadly Delta variant raced through the population worldwide. But saving lives came at the cost of grandparents’ mental health, according to a study in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences about grandparents in England. In the scary early months of the pandemic, grandparents cut off or limited interactions with their grandchildren. In England, the grandparents who isolated themselves suffered more mental health problems,... Continue Reading

San Francisco is caught in the vortex of two powerful forces: a fast-growing retiree population and rising rents. Residents over 60 are expected to make up a fourth of the city’s residents by 2030, according to this video project for The San Francisco Standard by Chris Chang, a student in the University of California, Berkeley’s graduate journalism school. And San Francisco rents, after collapsing during the pandemic as people left the city, are on the rise again. A one-bedroom apartment is going for $3,100 per month – second only to New York City – despite a rent control policy that limits... Continue Reading