On July 20, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had filed charges against a health insurance company for hiding a long list of consumer complaints from the company’s investors. Read More

According to the financial information website Investopedia, a deferred annuity is a contract with an insurance company that promises to pay the owner a regular income, or a lump sum, at some future date. An immediate annuity, in contrast, is an insurance contract that starts paying as soon as you purchase it. Deferred annuities are often aggressively marketed to consumers, especially elderly consumers, but some would say they have become the scourge of the unwary investor in recent years. Read More

The Health Insurance Marketplace® is a service that helps people shop for and enroll in health insurance. The Marketplace is run by the federal government under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which brought health insurance to millions of Americans who were previously uninsured. Read More

Tax season has come and gone for most of us (did somebody say extension?), but even if you already filed, if you didn’t get it all right, you can expect to hear back from the IRS telling you to try again. One particularly confusing area involves the premium tax credit offered as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare. The tax credit is a signature piece of the ACA, providing access to health insurance for millions of Americans who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. Read More