Retirement expert Bob Carlson’s research and knowledge on how to get the most out of healthcare options
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Your estate plan should be about a lot more than finances. An estate plan isn’t complete, for example, without the medical care documents. In fact, I always recommend making this a priority. Have the medical care documents finalized while you’re still considering the other issues in the estate plan. Also understand that medical care documents […]
A widespread belief is that medical bills cause a large number of bankruptcies, especially among older Americans. That belief is based on some studies that have been widely criticized. Here’s a review of a new study that comes to a very different conclusion. The key distinction between the studies is how many bankruptcies had medical […]
The recent budget deal in Congress included some changes in Medicare that haven’t received enough attention. The two-year budget deal in early February included a bill called the Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic Care Act, also known as CHRONIC. The bill had passed the Senate in October and was rolled into […]
Medicare began a long-overdue policy of removing Social Security numbers from Medicare cards and replacing them with unique 11-digit numbers. Unfortunately, this is leading to a new set of scams, described here. One new scam is for callers to say the beneficiary has to pay a fee to receive the new card. The cards will […]
In my new Retirement Watch Spotlight Series, I’ll share my newest breakthrough strategies for protecting your assets and growing your portfolio, including how to prepare for the next market downturn. Click here now to learn more.
After years of steady increases, premiums on traditional long-term care insurance policies declined in 2017, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. A couple in their 60s today can expect to pay $3,490 annually for policies that will pay $666,000 in benefits at age 85. According to the 2018 LTC Price Index, the […]
The HealthSavings Account(HSA) could bethe best retirementplanningvehicle available.Only the Roth IRA comes close. […]

The Health Savings Account (HSA) could be the best retirement planning vehicle available. Only the Roth IRA comes close. People are catching on to the advantages. There now are over $40 billion in HSAs, and the number of HSAs increased 16% over the last year. Much of the increase is because employers are switching to […]
Each year I encourage Medicare beneficiaries to use Open Season to shop around and compare the options in their plans. This article makes many of the same points. While Medicare plans are regulated, there still is a lot of difference between plans. You easily could spend twice as much for coverage as you need to, […]
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