Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

The new year starts Monday, and new Medicare rules and parameters will take effect. Here’s an example of how to answer a client question about what 2024 will mean for Medicare beneficiaries. The Question As we enter 2024, what should Medicare beneficiaries know about program updates? The Answer This year, Medicare beneficiaries will see changes in costs and changes in a major plan comparison tool. Medicare Part A Changes The Medicare Part A program covers inpatient hospitalization expenses. The Medicare Part A deductible will increase to $1,632 in 2024, from $1,600 in 2023. This change, albeit modest, could affect clients who go to the hospital. Coinsurance costs and skilled nursing facility costs are also rising. Coinsurance costs will rise to $408 per day for days 61 through 90 of hospitalization, up from $400 in 2024. The coinsurance cost for skilled nursing facility care will increase to $204 for days 21 through 100, from $200. Medicare Part A Premiums A majority of Medicare beneficiaries do not pay Part A premiums. For clients who have paid payroll taxes for 30 to 39 quarters, the premium will hold steady at $278 per month. For clients who have paid payroll taxes for fewer than...

The legislation known as the Secure 2.0 Act — short for the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement 2.0 Act — may have become law a year ago, but that doesn’t mean that clients are tired of hearing about it, or that they know all they should know about the landmark retirement reform law. In fact, to Terri Fiedler, president of retirement services at Corebridge Financial, the Secure 2.0 Act’s Dec. 29 passage anniversary creates an opportunity for deeper planning discussions with existing clients and prospects alike. Experts tell ThinkAdvisor it is also important for advisors themselves to understand how the Secure 2.0 Act, alongside its namesake predecessor from 2019, are setting up underserved populations to grow their wealth and become the next generation of retail wealth management clients. For example, the laws’ provisions to expand access to workplace retirement savings benefits should help many more Americans get and stay invested for the long term. All in all, Fiedler argues, early 2024 should be a great time for advisors to spark meaningful planning conversations with clients while also asking bigger questions about their own approach to retirement and wealth management. Emergency Savings and Secure 2.0 As Fiedler notes, in 2024,...

What You Need to Know New York would have become the second most populous state to ban these clauses, joining California. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, for instance, reported pressuring the governor’s office. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) vetoed legislation that would have banned employee non-competes in New York, after facing intense pressure from Wall Street, hospitals, and business groups that opposed the measure, according to sources familiar with the matter. The legislation (S3100) rejected by Hochul Friday would have barred employers from imposing contract language that prohibits employees or other “covered individuals” from obtaining employment after leaving their current jobs. “After weeks of negotiations where we compromised heavily to try to pass a law that would at least ban non-competes for low- and mid-wage workers, I’m incredibly disappointed that our final offer was rejected,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan (D), who sponsored the bill, in a statement. New York would have become the second most populous state to ban these clauses, joining California, which has had the restriction in place for more than a century. Supporters of the proposal said it would spur innovation and help New York compete with California for talent and new startups, particularly in the tech...

Early death tracking figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the recent surge in COVID-19 cases is continuing to increase overall U.S. mortality. COVID-19, pneumonia and influenza caused at least 2,093, or 8.6%, of the 24,056 deaths included in the very earliest, incomplete death count data for the week ending Dec. 16. COVID-19 alone caused about 3% of the deaths, up from 1% during the week ending July 1, when the disease seemed to be fading away, and up from 2.9% during the week ending Dec. 3. The earliest reasonably complete death numbers are for the week ending Dec. 2. They show that the United States as a whole reported 51,863 deaths for that. That’s 9.8% lower than the number recorded for the comparable week in 2022 but 8.4% higher than the number recorded for the comparable week in 2019, before COVID-19 came to light. What it means: Any retirement or estate planning forecasters who built significant mortality improvement into 2023 projections may have to recalibrate. The context: The total number of U.S. deaths from all causes for the period running from Jan. 1, 2023, through Dec. 2, 2023, was 2.8 million. That was down 5.9% from the total...