Women face distinct retirement-planning challenges, including higher longevity risk, less access to workplace retirement plans, and continued wage discrepancies. My column at Morningstar.com this month examines the trend, and summarizes expert advice on ways women can improve their odds of achieving a secure retirement. [...more]
Opponents of the Obama Administration’s health care reform law were overjoyed last month when the government threw in the towel on one of its controversial features: creation of a public option for long-term care. A portion of the reform law called The Community Living Assistance Services and Support (or CLASS Act) aimed to expand the [...] [...more]
The federal government threw in the towel on creating a public option for long-term care coverage last week, and that would seem to be definitive for now. In defeat, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was doing the right thing in admitting the concept’s flaws and cutting the government’s losses of the proposal, [...] [...more]
If Washington strikes a big deal on deficit reduction to avoid debt default, it’s going to be bad news all around for older Americans. The debt crisis negotiations may yield no more than a short-term Band-aid and sidestep long-term changes in spending policy. But it’s clear that the Obama Administration and some lawmakers are reaching [...] [...more]
The Urban Institute sponsored a webcast this morning examining the challenges implementing the CLASS Act, which is the public option for long-term care insurance within the new health reform law. I discussed those challenges in a recent column; you can view the archived Urban Institute event online. Urban Institute assembled an impressive panel of experts, [...] [...more]
