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Schiff recaps questions Bondi refused to answer during oversight hearing

admin - Latest News - October 7, 2025
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Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., presses Attorney General Pam Bondi on a list of topics she refused to discuss during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing, including bribery allegations against Tom Homan, the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, and the Epstein investigation.



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Oct. 7, 2025, 2:00 PM EDTBy Berkeley Lovelace Jr.If you’re among the roughly 165 million Americans who get your health coverage through work, not the government, you might be wondering: Is my plan next, now that health insurance premiums for Affordable Care Act plans are set to rise next year?Experts say there’s no single, across-the-board increase, but increases are likely for many people on employer-sponsored plans. And even if your monthly premium stays the same, you could still end up paying more through higher deductibles or copays.“Last year, health insurance premiums went up. This year, they went up. And next year, they’ll go up,” said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine who researches employer-based health insurance.Have you gotten a notice about health insurance premium hikes for next year? Whether you receive benefits from the Affordable Care Act or private insurance from your employer, we’d like to hear from you. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.So, how much could your plan go up? Unlike ACA plans, in which insurers publicly file proposed rate increases with states and federal regulators, employers often negotiate plans with insurers privately, said Gary Claxton, director of the Program on the Health Care Marketplace at KFF, a health policy research group. That means your premium increase might not be apparent until open enrollment.Even so, recent employer surveys shed some light on what companies expect to pay next year — though they may not pass the entire increase onto the employee.A September report from the benefits consulting firm Mercer found employers say health care plan costs could rise by nearly 9% on average in 2026 if they don’t take action to control costs. The survey was based on more than 1,700 U.S. employers. Another report from the consulting firm Aon projects employer health care costs will climb 9.5% next year, based on data from more than 1,000 U.S. companies. HR consulting firm Segal estimates a roughly 9% increase for health plans and 11% for prescription drugs. Claxton said some employers will decide to pass some of the additional costs onto employees through premiums. The Mercer report, for example, said the average cost of coverage per employee is expected to be 6% to 7% — the biggest increase in more than a decade — a jump that will likely show up in workers’ premiums.“If we’re seeing a big increase of 6.5%, it’s likely that the employee contribution, the employee share of the premium, is going to go up by the same amount,” said Beth Umland, director of research for health and benefits at Mercer. Other companies, however, may keep premiums steady, but raise deductibles or copays, Claxton said.Others, in a competitive labor market, might absorb the entire cost increase themselves. “Sometimes it’s better to eat that cost as opposed to upsetting your employees, particularly if it’ll mean that some of them will leave,” Claxton said. “It’s often more expensive to recruit new workers.”It also depends on how big the company is and whether its employees are healthy enough for it to take on the financial risk.“If you have a really young workforce, your premiums are going to be lower,” Claxton said. “If you have an older workforce, they’re going to be higher. If you’re an employer with only a few hundred employees, if you get a couple really sick people, you can see a big increase from year to year, particularly if that sickness is going to persist.”Schulman said some companies may try to control costs instead by limiting which doctors and hospitals employees can use, also called “narrow network.”Still, he said, the premium increases have been a growing trend: Health insurance costs as a percentage of median family household income have increased from 13% to 25% from 2000 to 2021.“These are enormous increases in health insurance premiums, Schulman said. Why is insurance getting more expensive?In the reports from Mercer and Aon, employers cited many of the same cost pressures that are driving up ACA premiums, including rising hospital costs and pricey prescription drugs, like GLP-1s, and a growing number of people seeking care — thanks in part to convenient options like telehealth that are making it easier for people to get help. JoAnn Volk, a research professor and co-director of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said the increases are largely due to rising health care costs. Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy sent a memo last month to Democratic senators who requested information about the proposed rate increases under ACA plans. Volk said many forces cited hitting ACA plans — including higher prices, more use of services and inflation — are hitting employer plans, too. What’s more, people are spending more. Health care spending jumped about 8.2% in 2024 and is projected to grow another 7.1% this year, outpacing spending across the broader economy, according to a June study published in Health Affairs. Health spending may slow slightly in 2026 as fewer people are expected to have health insurance, but costs will likely keep rising faster than the overall economy.Some employers could raise premiums next year, while others may have already locked in rates and won’t adjust them, Volk said.In the coming year, they may also factor in new employees who previously had coverage through the ACA marketplace or another individual plan.“Some employers start on a fiscal year, which might be summer of next year, and they would be more likely to say, ‘We have some sense now of who’s coming back into the employer plan, then the prices may adjust to reflect that,” she said. Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.
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Oct. 9, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Jarrod BarryThere has rarely been a more confusing time to be a holiday shopper.Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration mean many imports are more expensive today than they were just a few months ago.The government shutdown and fresh warning signals in the labor market are contributing to anxiety about the economy.One way to relieve some of the uncertainty ahead of the holidays could be to buy your gifts early this year. And there are plenty of ways to do that as retailers kick off deals season.Amazon Prime’s Big Deal Days, Target’s Circle Week, Best Buy’s Techtober Sale and Walmart Deals are just some of the national shopping events underway in October for the pre-pre-holiday shopper. “I think the retailers are acknowledging that there is consumer demand to alleviate that stress and anxiety and shop earlier by launching events like Prime Big Deal Days in early October,” said Jack O’Leary, director of e-commerce strategic insights at NielsenIQ. To get a better sense of how prices are changing week by week, NBC News has teamed up with web data infrastructure firm Bright Data to track the online retail prices of around 600 items across Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot, Walmart and Target.According to the latest data set, certain sectors are raising prices on more of their items than others. Shopping for gifts in October could mean significant savings over buying the same things in two months.It’s not all bad news. In a few departments, prices are rising less than you might expect, making these good options for last-minute shopping in December.ChocolateHigh cocoa prices forced candy makers like Hershey’s to charge more for nearly all of their chocolate this year.In July, the company announced that it would raise prices for retail customers by the “low double digits” percentages. “The increase we announced in July due to sustained, record high cocoa prices is it,” said a spokesperson for Hershey’s. “Implementation is about 90 days out from the announcement, so you’re likely seeing some of this starting to flow through. As a reminder, this does not impact Halloween seasonal candy.”Hershey’s also told analysts it expects that costs for raw cocoa, which have subsided a bit in recent weeks, will nonetheless remain relatively high into next year.In that environment, special deal days like the ones happening now could be a very good time to stock up on enough chocolate to get through to January. Clothes It would be reasonable to assume that apparel prices have soared this year. After all, the majority of clothes sold at U.S. retailers are manufactured overseas, many in countries that are caught up in a trade war with Washington.But that’s not what the data shows. NBC News’ tracker has picked up only a modest increase in retail prices since May. At Walmart, for example, less than 5% of the clothes we’re tracking are more expensive today than they were five months ago.If current trends hold, most T-shirts at Walmart won’t cost a lot more in December than they did in October.ToysFew places have been affected more by tariffs than the toy aisle. Last year, as many as 3 out of every 4 toys sold in the United States were manufactured in China. Since then, President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China have soared as high as 145% at the height of the trade war, before they settled at around 30%. The CEOs of rival toy giants Mattel and Hasbro both said this spring that their companies were working to diversify global manufacturing so that less than 40% of their toys come from China by the end of the year.But potentially not in time for the 2025 holiday season. Among the more than 11,000 products for sale on Amazon that Bright Data monitors, prices have increased for 37% of the sample’s Mattel toys, and 41% of its toys from Hasbro. Spokespeople for Amazon, Mattel and Hasbro didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.Jarrod BarryJarrod Barry is an intern with the NBC News Business Unit.Steve Kopack contributed.
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