Learn the secrets to maximizing your Social Security benefits and earn up to thousands of dollars more each year with expert advice that you can't get anywhere else. Want to know how to navigate the forbidding maze of Social Security and emerge with the highest possible benefits? You could try reading all 2,728 rules of the Social Security system (and the thousands of explanations of these rules), but Kotlikoff, Moeller, and Solman explain Social Security benefits in an easy to understand and user-friendly style. What you don't know can seriously hurt you: wrong decisions about which Social Security benefits to apply for cost some individual retirees tens of thousands of dollars in lost income every year. How many retirees or those nearing retirement know about such Social Security options as file and suspend (apply for benefits and then don't take them)? Or start stop start (start benefits, stop them, then re-start them)? Or-just as important-when and how to use these techniques? Get What's Yours covers the most frequent benefit scenarios faced by married retired couples, by divorced retirees, by widows and widowers, among others. It explains what to do if you're a retired parent of dependent children, disabled, or an eligible beneficiary who continues to work, and how to plan wisely before retirement. It addresses the tax consequences of your choices, as well as the financial implications for other investments. Many personal finance books briefly address Social Security, but none offers the thorough, authoritative, yet conversational analysis found here. You've paid all your working life for these benefits. Now, get what's yours.

A coauthor of the New York Times bestselling guide to Social Security Get What’s Yours authors an essential companion to explain Medicare, the nation’s other major benefit for older Americans. Learn how to maximize your health coverage and save money. Social Security provides the bulk of most retirees’ income and Medicare guarantees them affordable health insurance. But few people know what Medicare covers and what it doesn’t, what it costs, and when to sign up. Nor do they understand which parts of Medicare are provided by the government and how these work with private insurance plans—Medicare Advantage, drug insurance, and Medicare supplement insurance. Do you understand Medicare’s parts A, B, C, D? Which Part D drug plan is right and how do you decide? Which is better, Medigap or Medicare Advantage? What do you do if Medicare denies payment for a procedure that your doctor says you need? How do you navigate the appeals process for denied claims? If you’re still working or have a retiree health plan, how do those benefits work with Medicare? Do you know about the annual enrollment period for Medicare, or about lifetime penalties for late enrollment, or any number of other key Medicare rules? Health costs are the biggest unknown expense for older Americans, who are turning sixty-five at the rate of 10,000 a day. Understanding and navigating Medicare is the best way to save health care dollars and use them wisely. In Get What’s Yours for Medicare, retirement expert Philip Moeller explains how to understand all these important choices and make the right decisions for your health and wealth now—and for the future.

Know what’s driving your doctor’s decisions—and how to protect yourself. Through compelling real-life stories, Health Your Self reveals the forces that compromise your medical care, and arms you with the tools to navigate around them. • When a doctor refers you to a colleague in a hospital, there’s a hidden influence: he gets a bonus. • When a psychiatrist prescribes medication to school children, it might have more to do with the colossal overreach of drug companies than something your kids actually need. • When you are handed unnecessary painkillers at urgent care, the doctor could be bucking for a five-star rating on a patient satisfaction survey. Enough of those, he gets a raise. Health Your Self turns you into a smart, practical—and brave—healthy skeptic. “Backed with her twenty years of health reporting for Time, Janice M. Horowitz produced this eminently readable guide that empowers you to get the healthcare you really need. More knowledge, less waste, better care.” —Frank Lalli, the Health Care Detective™ at NPR’s Robin Hood Radio “This is a controversial book and I’m ready for the tough questions my patients are bound to ask after reading it.” —Jane Farhi, Cardiologist, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City “Finally, your own personal and portable patient advocate! Chock full of personal stories, this book is a public service. You’ll wind up the smartest person in the waiting room.” —Lillie Rosenthal, D.O., New York City “Health Your Self takes you behind the privacy curtain. When you turn the last page, you realize you were just handed everything it takes to get the best medical care possible.” —Leslie Laurence, Co-author of Outrageous Practices

One of the world's leading healthcare economists offers a hard-nosed analysisof the frightening reality of soaring healthcare costs--and shows how it willfeel to be at the mercy of a system that can't afford to cure anyone.

A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

Drs. Groopman and Hartzband reveal a clear path for making the right medical choices. Such factors as authority figures, statistics, other patients' stories, technology, and natural healing are key factors that shape choices.

Medicare For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119293392) was previously published as Medicare For Dummies, 2nd Edition (9781119079422). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product. Make your way through the Medicare maze with help from For Dummies America's baby boomers are now turning 65 at the rate of about 10,000 a day. Yet very few have any idea about how Medicare works, when they should sign up, or how the program fits in with other health insurance they may have. Medicare For Dummies, 2nd Edition provides a detailed road map for navigating Medicare's often-baffling complexities and helps consumers avoid pitfalls that could otherwise cost them dearly. In plain language, the new edition explains: How to qualify for Medicare, according to your personal circumstances, including new information on the rights of people in same-sex marriages When to sign up at the time that’s right for you, to avoid lifelong late penalties How to weigh Medicare’s many options so you can be confident of making the decision that's best for you What Medicare covers and what you pay, with up-to-date details of the costs of premiums, deductibles, and copays—and how you may be able to reduce those expenses By conveying not only the basics but also how to troubleshoot problems and where to find assistance, Medicare For Dummies, 2nd Edition helps you to get the most out of Medicare.

New York Times bestseller Business Book of the Year--Association of Business Journalists From the New York Times bestselling author comes an eye-opening, urgent look at America's broken health care system--and the people who are saving it--now with a new Afterword by the author. "A must-read for every American." --Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, FORBES One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of the business of medicine and its elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable. The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

Vaccinate children against deadly pneumococcal disease, or pay for cardiac patients to undergo lifesaving surgery? Cover the costs of dialysis for kidney patients, or channel the money toward preventing the conditions that lead to renal failure in the first place? Policymakers dealing with the realities of limited health care budgets face tough decisions like these regularly. And for many individuals, their personal health care choices are equally stark: paying for medical treatment could push them into poverty. Many low- and middle-income countries now aspire to universal health coverage, where governments ensure that all people have access to the quality health services they need without risk of impoverishment. But for universal health coverage to become reality, the health services offered must be consistent with the funds available—and this implies tough everyday choices for policymakers that could be the difference between life and death for those affected by any given condition or disease. The situation is particularly acute in low- and middle income countries where public spending on health is on the rise but still extremely low, and where demand for expanded services is growing rapidly. What’s In, What’s Out: Designing Benefits for Universal Health Coverage argues that the creation of an explicit health benefits plan—a defined list of services that are and are not available—is an essential element in creating a sustainable system of universal health coverage. With contributions from leading health economists and policy experts, the book considers the many dimensions of governance, institutions, methods, political economy, and ethics that are needed to decide what’s in and what’s out in a way that is fair, evidence-based, and sustainable over time.

“Amidst a thousand tirades against the excesses and waste of consumer society, What’s Mine Is Yours offers us something genuinely new and invigorating: a way out.” —Steven Johnson, author of The Invention of Air and The Ghost Map A groundbreaking and original book, What’s Mine is Yours articulates for the first time the roots of "collaborative consumption," Rachel Botsman and Roo Roger's timely new coinage for the technology-based peer communities that are transforming the traditional landscape of business, consumerism, and the way we live. Readers captivated by Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, Van Jones’ The Green Collar Economy or Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point will be wowed by this landmark contribution to the evolving ecology of commerce and sustainability.