From “Great Speculations”; Forbes ~ May 19, 2015

A recent report in the Wall Street Journal indicated that the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission have almost finished reviewing AT&T‘s proposed acquisition of satellite-TV provider DirecTV and are unlikely to block it. This is good news for AT&T considering that regulators had fiercely opposed Comcast‘s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable, which eventually led to the deal getting scuttled. However, the AT&T-DirecTV merger doesn’t create the same problems of skewed market dominance or unfair competition as the Comcast deal. Additionally, some reports suggest that regulators’ preoccupation with the Comcast deal might also have helped AT&T in getting a potential go-ahead.

By Emma Dumain; Roll Call ~ May 18, 2015

Senate Democrats successfully blocked debate on Trade Promotion Authority in their chamber until they were promised a vote on Trade Adjustment Assistance.

A similar gambit faces longer odds in the House, but Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairmen Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota began Monday an effort to rally support among Democrats to force changes to the pending TAA legislation.

From “Dividend Channel”; Forbes ~ May 18, 2015

In the latest look at the underlying components of the S&P 500 ordered by largest market capitalization, AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) has taken over the #20 spot from Coca-Cola Co (NYSE: KO), according to The Online Investor. Click here to find out the top S&P 500 components ordered by average analyst rating »

By Ashlea Ebeling; Forbes ~ May 14, 2015

Shoring up Social Security and ramping up private savings were the laudable goals on the agenda at a recent conference, Improving Retirement Security, put on by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Concord Coalition. But high-income earners might not like the proposed solutions experts kept falling back on: raising taxes one way or another.

By Jay Hancock; Kaiser Health News ~ May 13, 2015

In the late 1990s you could have taken what hospitals charged to administer inpatient chemotherapy and bought a Ford Escort econobox. Today average chemo charges (not even counting the price of the anti-cancer drugs) are enough to pay for a Lexus GX sport-utility vehicle, government data show.

By Paul Sullivan; The New York Times ~ May 13, 2015

Death and disease don’t discriminate, and that has many high-net-worth retirees worried. They realize fate could determine the quality of their retirement more than their lifetime of planning.

“They have command and control over other aspects of their life, but this is the unknown,” said Bill Hunter, director of retirement strategy for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “It’s the who, what and when. Who will be afflicted? Will it be acute or chronic? Then the when: early in their retirement or in their later years?”

By Bill Alpert; Barron’s ~ May 08, 2015

As chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, Steve Goss might not seem the type who would attract controversy—or even much attention. By all accounts, the career public servant, 66, is a conscientious technocrat. But with almost 60 million beneficiaries, Social Security is the U.S.’s biggest, most popular government program, and its actuaries have the crucial job of telling us how far it is from hitting fiscal icebergs. The trillion-dollar program’s importance is such that its forecasts are closely watched by policy experts. Among them is Gary King, a prominent Harvard University political scientist who, with colleagues, published a sharply critical study on Friday, calling Goss and his fellow actuaries’ forecasts “systematically biased and overconfident.”

Investor’s Business Daily ~ May 08, 2015

Social Security could be insolvent in just 14 years, according to a new report.

Entitlements: Officially, Social Security has enough money to pay all its promised benefits until 2033. But a new study suggests this forecast could be wildly optimistic. And that spells big trouble for future retirees.

By Wendy Davis; MediaPost ~ May 06, 2015

Facing pressure from regulators, AT&T said today that it will revise its practice of throttling some smartphone users who subscribe to old, unlimited data plans.

Now, instead of automatically throttling unlimited customers after they exceed a monthly allotment, the company only slows down those users when the network is congested.

By Arthur Allen; Politico ~ May 04, 2015

Medical errors that can be traced to the automation of the U.S. health care system are increasingly an issue in medical malpractice lawsuits.

Some of the doctors, attorneys and health IT experts involved in the litigation fear that safety and data integrity problems could undercut the benefits of electronic health records unless HHS and Congress address them aggressively.