Page 36 - Program Participation News Today

Plus, The New York Times ends its Virus Briefing newsletter, COVID-era food benefits stop at end of February and millions will be affected, and more.

Adult children need to start having conversations now with aging parents about their finances.

If public employees are underpaid, they ought to get raises when they switch to the private sector. But they don’t, and that fact is telling. Debates over compensation for public employees have raged at all levels of government over the past few years. The Federal Salary Council, an official advisory body, claimed in October that federal employees are paid only 65 cents for each dollar earned by workers in comparable jobs outside the federal government.

Imagine trying to work out the family budget with two different sets of books when they show a dramatically different bottom line. Which could you rely on? Welcome to the world of federal data - which can drive researchers and policy-makers crazy. For example, on Nov. 30, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the new consumer expenditures figures for 2003. The Labor Department says more than 115 million households spent an average of $40,817 on goods and services last year, totaling some $4.7 ...

Recent research shows that there are important, unrealized distortions and costs associated with extending dependent coverage to age 26.

A health insurance exchange facilitates personal, portableinsurance independent of the place of work; makes efforts to insurethe uninsured more targeted and effective, breaking the cycle ofrotation in and out of coverage and reducing the number ofuninsured; and provides the administrative framework needed toreach the hardest to insure and cover them efficiently andeffectively.

Income levels for Americans vary across geography, race, and gender.

Local governments in Ohio and Illinois are using American Rescue Plan Act money to relieve residents struggling with medical debt by partnering with an organization that buys debt and wipes the slate clean for debtors. It’s a strategy advocates say could be duplicated across the country to help erase a multibillion-dollar problem.

Some states have taken their stimulus recovery funds and helped residents to get out of medical debt, which can be bought for pennies on the dollar.

Medical debt is more common in certain areas of the country, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, particularly in the Southeast and Southwest.