Archive for December 2024

Fourteen years ago, Congress set out to remedy a basic unfairness in the tax code. The tax that funds Medicare, because it’s aimed mainly at wages, hits even the poorest American workers. But the wealthy could easily avoid paying their share. So lawmakers created a new type of Medicare tax to capture the kinds of income the rich often enjoy: interest, dividends and capital gains from investments…. We identified 17 people who, in the first six years of the law, 2013 through 2018, each shielded at least $1 billion in capital gains from the tax. Together, this small group, by collectively exempting more than $35 billion, saved about $1.3 billion in taxes.

Tescha Hawley, a citizen of the Gros Ventre Tribe who lives on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, is among the patients who say they were stuck with medical debt that the Indian Health Service should have paid.

Hiking by yourself deep in a forest and similar episodes of intense solitude are not as likely to restore energy and enhance social connectedness as less complete forms of solitude, such as reading in a cafe or listening to Spotify while commuting.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine…. announced a $2 million investment to expand the Child Protective Services Fellowship Program, which allows college seniors majoring in human services-related fields to work part-time at county public children services agencies.

A charter of rights for people affected by substance use has been launched by the Scottish Government, designed to ‘improve the experience of anyone needing support’.

The initiative, led by departments including the Social Work Department of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, marks the first provincial-level, multi-departmental effort on the Chinese mainland to address outdoor secondhand smoke exposure and minimize passive smoking.