By Katie Thomas; The New York Times ~ Apr 16, 2014

Even as the cost of prescription drugs has plummeted for many Americans, a small slice of the population is being asked to shoulder more and more of the cost of expensive treatments for diseases like cancer and hepatitis C, according to a report to be released on Tuesday by a major drug research firm.

The findings echo the conclusions of two other reports released last week by major pharmacy benefit managers, which predicted that spending on so-called specialty drugs would continue to rise.

The report, by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, also found that consumers’ use of health care — visits to the doctor, hospital admissions and prescription drug use — rose in 2013 for the first time in three years, mainly because of the improving economy, it said.

By Sarah Hurtubise; The Daily Caller ~ Apr 15, 2014

The Census Bureau will make significant changes to its annual survey that it will make it difficult to measure Obamacare’s effects, The New York Times reports.

The Current Population Survey, the questionnaire used during interviews with tens of thousands of households, will undergo a “total revision to health insurance questions” this fall, according to internal Census documents. The changes will make the new findings incomparable to census data from years before the health-care law went into effect.

Officials say the changes are intended to improve the census survey’s accuracy. Internal Census documents alleged that the timing wasn’t purposely intended to cloud clear analysis of Obamacare’s effects.

By Alex Wayne; Bloomberg ~ Apr 12, 2014

The first challenge Sylvia Mathews Burwell may face as the nation’s top health official could come from the insurance industry.

WellPoint Inc. (WLP), the biggest commercial insurer in the health law’s exchanges, said last month it may seek “double-digit plus” premium increases for 2015. While many other insurers have declined to comment on next year’s rates, large price increases may chase people away in Year 2 of Obamacare, giving foes impetus to push changes.

Republicans say Burwell will be asked during confirmation hearings to answer questions that her predecessor as health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, avoided. That includes whether the ratio of healthy, young people to older Obamacare enrollees will cause insurers to raise prices next year. HHS may be reviewing proposed rates for 2015 plans, due in June, during the leadership transition

By Mitch Tuchman; Forbes ~ Apr 11, 2014

Charles Dickens understood budgeting quite well. In David Copperfield, the character Mr. Micawber notes:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

You likely will never fully understand this simple truth until you are retired and the income flow is suddenly restricted. Working more is not an option. Borrowing becomes dangerous. The result, for many, is a brutal readjustment to a new reality.

By Blair Shiff; KUSA-TV ~ Apr 11, 2014

KUSA – April is Financial Literacy Month, so let’s talk about your financial know-how. Are you financially prepared if you need to stop working for a few months due to a layoff or illness? Do you know how much money you have lying around? What about your kids? Are you setting them on a path to financial health?

RetailMeNot recently polled more than 1,000 Americans and found that overall consumers are doing pretty well on the personal finance front. As it turns out, Americans are savers: A whopping 80 percent have money set aside, and on average, the savings would last over eight months with no other income.

The survey did reveal a few areas of concern:

By Matthew Heimer; MarketWatch ~ Apr 11, 2014

What’s the secret to enjoying your retirement years? Counterintuitively enough, it might be having a rewarding, flexible job. A recent study published in the IZA Journal of European Labor Studies suggests that people who keep working after age 65 tend to be much happier than their peers who are retired–as long as they’re working by choice, and not because they’re broke.

Sociologists have known for a long time that in the industrialized world, most people’s happiness—as self-reported in surveys that ask questions about well-being–bottoms out around age 40, and then rises steadily through the retirement years. In fact, people over age 65 tend to rate their happiness higher than they ever did in their youth.

Common sense might suggest that older people are happier because they aren’t working as much. But the new study, by Brookings Institute fellow Carol Graham and University of Maryland public-policy scholar Milena Nikolova, indicates that those who are working are generally more satisfied than those who aren’t.

By Mitch Tuchman; Forbes ~ Apr 11, 2014

Retirement investors have a simple task: Compound their money steadily over decades at minimal risk. Easy, right? You’d be surprised.

Many of us want the kind of sure-footed advice that will lead to a predictable, low-risk outcome, but often we are sold the opposite. Unsuitable, high-risk strategies that work once a decade. High-cost funds with lackluster returns. Fees galore.

Recognizing these risks is half the battle. Here are five danger signs that your investment plan is higher risk than necessary and likely needs to be reconsidered before too much damage is done:

By Sarah Hurtubise; The Daily Caller ~ Apr 11, 2014

On top of rising premiums, Obamacare taxes are adding hundreds of dollars per year onto customers’ costs, according to new study from the American Action Forum.

Those who braved the health care law’s exchanges will have to pay an extra $354 on average in 2014, reports the free-market D.C.-based think tank, just due to seven taxes included in Obamacare.

The vast majority of the country covered by employer-sponsored health insurance will be forced to pay a somewhat lower tab of $196 to cover the taxes. Those with self-funded employer-sponsored insurance are exempt from several of the largest culprits and will have the lowest added cost at $94 in 2014, which will drop to $59 by 2016.

By Paul Sullivan; The New York Times ~ Apr 11, 2014

Advisers put a considerable amount of effort into talking to clients about accumulating a life savings. But advisers and their clients tend to devote less thought to how to spend that money when it’s time.

Some sort of conversation generally happens when clients approach retirement, but it may need to start happening earlier and become much more sophisticated.

“If I have $1 million in my retirement account, how I’m going to distribute it is ninth out of 10 steps,” said David A. Littell, director of the retirement income certified professional program at the American College of Financial Services.

Mr. Littell has actually drawn up a list of 18 risks that people have to consider. These include some you can control — spending too much — and some you can’t, like living longer than expected, needing expensive health care and not being able to work as long before or in retirement as planned.

By Michael D. Shear; The New York Times ~ Apr 10, 2014

WASHINGTON — Days after hitting their target of signing up more than seven million people for health insurance, Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, and other top aides to President Obama gathered last week on the patio just outside Mr. McDonough’s West Wing office.

In an hour-long interview they requested, the officials said one of their biggest mistakes in the disastrous health care rollout last fall was worrying about the wrong thing. They said they focused too much on their ultimately unfounded fear that not enough insurance companies would participate in the health marketplaces and that premium prices would be too high. In turn, they said, they ignored what became the real problem, a website that was virtually inaccessible in its opening days.