Social Security Phone Scams on the Rise

In the past week, I have received more than a dozen phony calls on my cell phone warning me about “suspicious activity” in my Social Security account and threatening to cut off my benefits if I don’t return the call. Luckily, I know they’re fake calls and I just hang up, but thousands of vulnerable…

Alicia Munnell’s Social Security Bridge v. Annuities Income Planning Smackdown

More U.S. retirement savers should probably buy ordinary annuities before they retire, but they don’t, and policymakers need to come up with an alternative, according to Alicia Munnell, a top academic retirement policy researcher. Munnell — director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College — says she thinks promoting use of “Social Security bridge” arrangements may be…

Tenth Circuit Upholds HHS Risk Adjustment Methodology

On December 31, 2019, a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the methodology adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to administer the risk adjustment program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). A district court in New Mexico had previously concluded that part of the methodology—the use of statewide average premiums—was arbitrary…