By Sarah N. Lynch & Suzanne Barlyn; Reuters ~ Apr 14, 2015

(Reuters) – The U.S. Labor Department proposed sweeping changes on Tuesday that would require brokers who offer retirement advice to enter into “best interest” contracts with investors, in an effort to ensure customers are not steered into high-fee products.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez unveiled the long-awaited plan, saying new rules are needed to protect consumers who may receive investment advice that is driven more by what will line brokers’ pockets, and not by their best financial needs.

By Emily Stephenson & David Lawder; Reuters ~ Apr 14, 2015

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Tuesday said Democratic President Barack Obama’s advisers would recommend that he veto a pending Republican-authored bill to repeal the estate tax.

A vote on the bill in the House of Representatives could come as soon as Thursday, though it was seen as having little chance of becoming law.

Known by conservative opponents as the “death tax,” the estate tax tops out at 40 percent and is imposed on inherited assets worth $5.4 million or more. It has long been a target of Republican critics who say that it burdens grieving people.

By Scott Burns; The Dallas Morning News ~ Apr 11, 2015

Tax reform is in the air — again. This means we will be subject to the wretched posturing of politicians saying they want to help the middle class. They will do this by giving us some of our income back and calling it tax relief.

Well, I have a suggestion.

By Sarah Ferris; The Hill ~ Apr 10, 2015

The federal agency overseeing Medicare is warning that the House’s recently passed bill on the “doc fix” will not be the final step to resolving a nearly 20-year-old problem.

The chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wrote in a report Friday that the legislation would effectively end the two-decades-old battle in Congress over annual cuts to the Medicare physician payments. But it also said Congress would need to pass more legislation to ensure that Medicare doctors do not lose out in the long-term.

By Ben Steverman; Bloomberg ~ Apr 10, 2015

Some $1.4 trillion in individual income taxes are due to the IRS on April 15. But for many Americans, that’s only the half of it. A new report from the U.S. Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation shows that looking only at income taxes misses most of what we pay to the federal government each year.

The average American pays an income tax rate of 10.1 percent, the Joint Committee shows, although that varies quite a bit depending on income:

By Drew Fitzgerald, DJBN; NASDAQ ~ Apr 08, 2015

Call center workers for AT&T Inc. leaked confidential information about 280,000 subscribers so resellers could unlock used phones, federal regulators said Wednesday.

The Federal Communications Commission said the privacy breach involved the disclosure of names, parts of Social Security numbers and other data by call center workers in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines. AT&T paid $25 million to settle the claims.

By Sarah Ferris; The Hill ~ Apr 07, 2015

Lawmakers and lobbyists representing children’s insurance advocates, seniors’ healthcare providers and other specialty groups are pressing to amend a $200 billion Medicare package the Senate hopes to send to President Obama’s desk next week.

The underlying bill would permanently change Medicare to prevent cuts in physician payments that Congress has had to repeatedly patch for more than two decades.

By Louise Aronson; The Washington Post ~ Apr 06, 2015

The clinic was in a dilapidated old building, yet the entryway retained a worn grandeur. Tapering, semicircular walls extended like welcoming arms, and a half-moon of sidewalk stretched to the quiet side street.

That’s where I first saw her, standing at the curb with her cane propped on her walker, squinting toward the nearby boulevard. The woman was clearly well into her 80s, with a confident demeanor and with clothes and hair that revealed an attention to appearance. She had a cellphone in one hand and seemed to be waiting for a ride.

By Laura Meckler, Wall Street Journal – Apr 5, 2015

For years, liberal Democrats have fought against proposals to cut Social Security benefits. Now, they’re pushing the party not just to defend benefits but to increase them, and that could present a problem for Hillary Clinton.

The call for higher benefits is a marked difference from recent years in which the White House and Republicans were negotiating deficit-cutting deals, leaving liberals to argue merely for staving off benefit cutbacks. Separately, many experts in both parties have long argued that extending the solvency of the program would require a combination of benefit cuts and tax increases.

By Kenneth Thorpe, PhD; The Hill ~ Apr 04, 2015

An unfortunate development in recent Washington health policy debates is that lawmakers often talk at and about patients but not to patients. We hear speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives and Senate about what patients across the country need, but we don’t hear from the patients themselves. The end result is that in many cases, our elected officials vote on health care legislation that has life or death implications, without first consulting with the very people whose lives and livelihoods are at stake.