Money Talk: Mind the GAP Coverage Limitations
Question: In 2012, I financed a 2008 Honda at my credit union. The car was priced at $16,500. With a trade-in, the loan came to $22,000. Guaranteed Auto Protection coverage, or GAP, was factored into the loan payments, which were $464 a month. Last year, the car was wrecked and deemed a total loss by the insurance company. They paid the “book value” of $8,860 to the credit union. However, $6,000 remained on the loan. The GAP coverage...
Employers Test Obamacare By Excluding Some Surgeries
Libbi Stovall couldn’t believe it last month when she looked at the fine print in her company’s 2016 health plan, which supposedly meets the strictest standard for employer obligations under Affordable Care Act rules. The insurance paid for inpatient hospital care, office visits and diagnostic imaging. But it provided no coverage for outpatient surgery, which accounts for two out of every three operations in the nation, according to...
Money Talk: Long Waits for IRS to Issue Refunds
Question: How long is too long for an IRS tax refund to be disbursed? I got my state tax refund in a matter of weeks. The IRS refund has been “under review” for almost five months. Answer: A sizable surge in tax refund theft as well as a database breach that exposed more than 300,000 taxpayers’ returns have kept the IRS pretty busy. At the same time, big budget cuts have left the agency with fewer people to help with these issues....
Consumer Confidential: UnitedHealth’s ‘Tantrum’ Over Low Profits
UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest private health insurer, has discovered that sick people tend to go to the doctor. And that means bills to pay. And that’s bad for the company’s bottom line. So UnitedHealth said recently that, because of the “continuing deterioration” of its profits from Obamacare, it may quit offering coverage through the system by 2017. In its next breath, UnitedHealth stressed that it “remains a strong...
Uninsured Americans Below 10%
Washington — Nearly a million people signed up for health insurance under President Obama’s law even after the official enrollment season ended, helping push the share of uninsured Americans below 10 percent and underscoring how hard it could be for Republicans to dismantle the program. The Health and Human Services Department said Thursday that 943,934 new customers have signed up since open enrollment ended on Feb. 22, benefiting...
