Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP news: payment dates, rule changes, premiums and the deadlines that affect your benefits.
Older Americans on food assistance can now keep more in savings under the federal SNAP rules. On October 1, the SNAP limit on countable assets for households that include someone 60 or older or someone with a disability rose to $4,750, up from $4,500 a year earlier. The change is part of the program’s annual…
Social Security left hundreds of thousands of warnings about unreported paychecks sitting in its system, and the result was an estimated $1 billion in Supplemental Security Income that should not have gone out, the agency’s inspector general reported. Most of that money is gone for good. The watchdog estimates $664 million can no longer be…
Shoppers using SNAP food benefits in Montana, North Dakota and South Carolina are scheduled to lose the ability to buy soda, candy and energy drinks with those benefits on Sunday, November 1. All three states had planned to start earlier and pushed the date back this summer. The rules also differ from state to state…
Pennsylvania’s winter heating assistance program is scheduled to open for applications on Monday, November 2, a full month earlier than last season’s start, when a federal government shutdown pushed the opening into December. The program, known as LIHEAP, pays one-time grants directly to a household’s utility or heating fuel company, and the income limits for…
The Social Security Administration failed to tell an estimated 8,726 disabled beneficiaries that they could file for a higher retirement benefit, and the money they could have collected is now beyond the agency’s reach, according to an audit released October 6 by the agency’s inspector general. The people involved share a specific situation: their disability…
Social Security paid an estimated $435,000 in Supplemental Security Income to about 660 people whose unreported vehicles affected their eligibility, its inspector general has found. The dollar figure is small by federal standards. The finding behind it is not: the agency relied on what recipients told it about their cars and had no policy requiring…
Nebraska became the first state to tie Medicaid coverage to work this year, and its own numbers now show what that looks like in practice: 1,090 people were denied coverage or lost it under the new rules by the end of August. Most of them were not turned away for failing to work. They were…
People who receive Supplemental Security Income will see two deposits in October and none in November. The second October payment, due on Friday, October 30, is not a bonus or an extra month of benefits — it is November’s payment, sent early because November 1 falls on a Sunday. The shift happens four times in…
About 600,000 people in Humana Medicare Advantage plans are learning this month that the plan they are in will not exist next year. The company told investors in July that its targeted 2027 plan exits would affect roughly that many members, and the letters carrying the news are dated October 2 under a federal rule…
IRA owners who are 70½ or older can send up to $111,000 directly from an IRA to qualifying charities in 2026 without counting the money as taxable income, up from $108,000 in 2025. The Internal Revenue Service set the new figure in its annual cost-of-living notice for retirement plans. Those transfers, called qualified charitable distributions,…
How the week's news hits your wallet
One Washington money change, translated every weekday — what it means for your wallet.