Sigh. All people born before 1955 (i.e. those who turn 65 before 2020) will be able to sign up for Plan F in any year, even if they're not current enrollees.
The article says that the only difference between Plans F and G is that in the latter, "People must pay Medicare’s deductible before insurance coverage kicks in each year." There's also another difference. In 2019, only Plan F offered a high deductible option. Going forward, only Plan G will have that option.
It says that Plan G will become more expensive as "the pool of people coming into the plan will start becoming less healthy than those who previously enrolled when financial advisors pointed them toward a bargain." Is it really suggesting that financial advisors have been committing malpractice by steering sick people away from the better bargain (Plan G)? The article said that Plan G was the better deal (independent of health) because the all in cost (premiums plus part B deductible) was less than Part F's.
What will happen is not so much that Plan G premiums will rise, but that Plan F premiums will. That's for two reasons. One is that its pool of people will get older (thus more costly to cover). This year, anyone age 65 or above (i.e. virtually all potential enrollees) can buy Plan F. Next year, you'll have to be 66 or better to buy Plan F. Then 67, 68, and eventually all the potential participants will die out.
Which leads to the second reason. The pool will grow smaller. The idea of insurance is that while you never know who will need care, you know with near certainty what the average cost will be. But as the pool shrinks, that certainty fades. Insurers have to prepare for an increasingly likely black swan event. That means rising premiums for Plan F.
Medical underwriting: If you live in a state like New York or Massachusetts, you can buy any Medigap policy at any time, no questions asked. Or if you live in a state like California, once a year you have the option of "downgrading" your policy. So you could easily switch from Plan F to Plan G some time in the future once Plan F's premiums starting rising quickly. It pays to know what the rules are for your personal situation.
https://www.medicareresources.org/states/

American Beacon http://www.americanbeaconfunds.com/downloads/resourcecenter/TaxAndDividend/2019YearEndEstDividendSchedule.pdf
BNY Mellon https://im.bnymellon.com/us/en/individual/index.jsp
Brown Advisory https://www.brownadvisory.com/sites/default/files/2019 Distribution Estimates_October.pdf
DWS Funds https://fundsus.dws.com/EN/products/mutual-funds.jsp?wt_eid=2157332130100696272&wt_t=1573321507704
Firsthand Funds ( New ) http://firsthandfunds.com/index.php?fuseaction=funds.distributions
Invesco Oppenheimer ( Update Site ) https://www.invesco.com/us-rest/contentdetail?contentId=bfdbc2b9cb974410VgnVCM100000c2f1bf0aRCRD
Legg Mason Family of Funds https://www.leggmason.com/content/dam/legg-mason/documents/en/tax-information/capital-gains-distribution/2019-projected-year-end-distributions.pdf
Lord Abbett https://www.lordabbett.com/en/strategies/tax-center/capital-gain-distributions.html#la_Estimated_Capital_Gains
Morgan Stanley Funds https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/forms/tax/2019-estimated-year-end-distributions.pdf?1571872765816
Value Line https://vlfunds.com/gains
Western Southern - Touchstone Funds https://www.westernsouthern.com/-/media/files/touchstone/tax-planning/capital-gains.pdf

FYI: Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. To which his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, would retort years later, “Yes, they have more money.”
This difference these days is referred to as inequality, which of course figures prominently in today’s politics. This week’s Democratic debate displayed that in spades, with potential presidential candidates proffering measures to narrow the difference between Fitzgerald’s very rich and presumably just about everybody else who watched the proceedings.
Prominent among these suggestions was a wealth tax, proposed by the two leading lights of the left, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, would levy a 2% tax on a household’s wealth that exceeds $50 million, and 3% on the amount above $1 billion. The Vermont independent’s plan would start at 1% on a household’s wealth over $32 million and increase to 8% on assets above $10 billion.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-real-problem-with-wealth-taxes-51571413910?mod=hp_LEAD_3

FYI: The so-called Cadillac of Medicare-related insurance is being phased out at year’s end, shutting Medicare newcomers out of the plan that many retirees buy for peace of mind, and potentially boosting costs for those who remain or turn to another popular option.
People who turn 65 after 2019 won’t be allowed to pick Medigap supplement Plan F, the most popular supplemental plan that helps retirees cover medical costs that Medicare doesn’t pay. Retirees already in Plan F by year’s end will be allowed to stay. Almost 60% of the 14 million people who have Medicare supplement insurance are in Plan F, according to CSG Actuarial research.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/medigap-plan-f-will-soon-end-heres-how-that-changes-retirees-costs-51571393701?mod=past_editions

Re: “ Stocks Waver On China Data”
Does somebody get paid to cook up these silly headlines every day? Yesterday it was BREXIT. The day before that it might have been the lunar cycle. I don’t know. Of course, only a third grader would believe that a single factor “moves” the markets each day, or for that matter, that there’s been any significant movement at all for a long time.
Truth is the markets have been incredibly stable for a long time now - save perhaps for some nations like China that are hurting from the tariffs. So pretty much nothing happened of consequence in the financial markets today ... or yesterday ... or the day before that. Trying to pretend something important happened borders on insanity.
My headline: “Markets have gone nowhere for most of the year.”
- U.S. stock indexes are near where they sat more than a year ago, mid-way thru 2018. For the most part, they’ve retrenched / recovered from the nasty selloff of late 2018.
- Gold was hot for the first 5-6 months of the year, tacking on $100-$200 and getting up above $1500. But it has in recent weeks slumped back below the $1500 level.
- Oil has stagnated (fitting I guess for a product derived from dead dinosaurs). Brent and NYMEX have been hugging the line just below $60 for several months now - far below their all time highs of several years earlier.
- Interest rates fell sharply for a month or so to absurdly low levels. They’ve retrenched those sharp declines in recent weeks but remain abnormally low.
- Jerome Powell is breathing easier nowadays as the scapegoating of him seems to have abated. DT’s attention and wrath have been diverted away from Chairman Powell’s backside to some - uhmm - other pressing issues.

FYI: U.S. stocks fell Friday on global growth worries, but major indexes were still poised to close the week with modest gains after a strong kickoff to corporate earnings season.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 255 points, or 0.95%, in afternoon trading, dragged down by Boeing and Johnson & Johnson. The S&P fell 0.39%, while the Nasdaq Composite declined .83%.
Are three indexes are within 4% of all-time highs reached this summer, showing the resilience of the U.S. stock market despite concerns about slowing growth at home and abroad.
Friday’s declines came after fresh Chinese growth data sparked concerns about the world’s No. 2 economy and a slew of negative headlines pummeled some of the biggest U.S. companies.
Among Friday’s movers, Johnson & Johnson slumped 4.7% after the company said it was recalling a single lot of baby powder after tests found small amounts of chrysotile asbestos. Boeing tumbled 3.5% after Reuters reported that the aircraft maker’s employees may have misled regulators over the safety of the 737 Max.
Technology stocks were broadly lower, with Netflix down 6% after several analysts cut their price targets for the streaming-video company. Chipmaker Micron Technology tumbled 4.4%, while Microsoft fell 1.7%.
But the S&P was still poised for a 0.5% increase for the week--its second consecutive week of gains--largely due to upbeat quarterly earnings reports, including from banks like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.
Of the 73 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings through Friday morning, more than four-fifths have topped analysts’ expectations, according to Refinitiv. That’s largely because expectations came down so much in recent months.
Coca-Cola, United Airlines Holdings and health-insurance giant UnitedHealth Group are among the stocks that rallied this week on better-than-expected results.
Overseas, Chinese stocks dropped sharply after data showed the Chinese the economy slowed further in the third quarter. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.3%, its biggest decline in a month.
Fresh data showed that China’s economy grew 6% in the quarter as business activity continued to deteriorate. Each quarterly slowdown in Chinese growth has pulled the country’s economic performance to new lows not seen since the current measure of output was adopted in 1992.
The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.3%. In the U.K., the FTSE 100 dropped 0.4% and the pound climbed 0.4% against the dollar.
Investors are watching developments closely before U.K. lawmakers vote Saturday on a draft Brexit agreement struck with the European Union. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is trying to muster enough support for the deal in the U.K. Parliament.
The yield on U.S. 10-year Treasurys fell to 1.741% from 1.757% on Thursday. Bond yields move in the opposite direction from prices.
In commodities, U.S. crude futures fell 0.6% to $53.59 a barrel. Gold futures slipped 0.2%.
Regards,
Ted
Bloomberg Evening Briefing:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-18/your-evening-briefing
MarketWatch:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-index-futures-struggle-for-direction-after-weak-china-growth-2019-10-18/print
WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-stocks-slide-after-economic-growth-cools-11571389552
Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/asia-stocks-set-for-mixed-open-before-china-data-markets-wrap?srnd=premium
IBD:
https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/stock-market-bad-day-continues-these-two-stocks-took-down-the-dow/
CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/stock-market-wall-street-in-focus-amid-corporate-earnings.html
Reuters:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/wall-street-pressured-by-jj-global-growth-concerns-idUKKBN1WX1FV
U.K:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-stocks/ftse-feels-ihgs-pain-amid-caution-ahead-of-brexit-vote-idUKKBN1WX0QO
Europe:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-stocks/string-of-weak-earnings-leave-european-stocks-barely-up-on-the-week-idUSKBN1WX0PS
Asia:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/asia-markets-october-18-china-gdp-brexit-oil-and-currencies.html
Bonds:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/treasury-yields-tick-higher-as-investors-digest-china-data-brexit-developments.html
Currencies:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/forex-markets-brexit-deal-chinas-economy-in-focus.html
Oil
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/gold-markets-brexit-deal-in-focus.html
Gold:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/18/gold-markets-brexit-deal-in-focus.html
Current Futures:
https://finviz.com/futures.ashx

Surely you're not suggesting that 3M does most of its mining and manufacturing in Minnesota, or that US Bank does most of its lending to midwest businesses. I might grant you midwesterners consume a lot of processed meats (Hormel). But enough of this Spam :-)
Mairs and Power says that it invests in (local) companies it knows about. That's an argument for investing in global funds where the managers live abroad (close to the companies they invest in), not for investing in companies that do business close to home.
Counter example to regional investing: FKCGX, formerly Franklin California Growth Fund. One would think that California would be a broad enough market that a fund could easily limit its investments to that state. (Franklin is based in San Mateo, Calif nearly midway between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and a stone's throw from Oracle.)
But it first dropped its 80% California requirement to 50%:

It has been a policy of the Franklin California Growth Fund, under normal market conditions, to invest at least 80% of its net assets in equity securities of California companies. Effective September 1, 2002, Franklin California Growth Fund will change its name to "Franklin Flex Cap Growth Fund" and will eliminate the 80% investment policy. ... [replacement strategy] The Fund normally invests a majority of its assets in California companies

Apparently that wasn't "flex"ible enough.

Effective October 1, 2004, the section "Goal and Strategies" ... is replaced with the following: ...
Under normal market conditions, the Fund invests primarily in equity securities of companies that the manager believes have the potential for capital appreciation. The Fund has the flexibility to invest in companies located, headquartered, or operating inside and outside the United States, across the entire market capitalization spectrum from small, emerging growth companies to well-established, large-cap companies.

The successor fund was merged into FGRAX in August 2016.

1999 NYTImes feature on FKCGX. Like Mairs and Power, emphasizing knowledge of companies near where the managers are:

Call it the home-team advantage.
"We're able to keep close tabs on our investments," said Conrad B. Herrmann, lead manager of the $1.58 billion Franklin California Growth fund, which focuses on California companies. "We read local newspapers in California and socialize and interact with people who might be employed in the companies in our universe."

FYI: Most U.S. investors have a bias toward U.S. stocks. If the relative value of assets invested in U.S.-listed mutual funds and exchange-traded funds is any indication, the average U.S. investor allocated about 24% to foreign-stock funds and 76% to U.S.-stock funds at the end of June 2019 (this excludes sector and global funds). In contrast, U.S. stocks represented about 45% of the FTSE Global All Cap Index. It isn’t necessary to eliminate this bias toward U.S. stocks to reap the diversification benefits that foreign stocks offer. That said, foreign stocks should represent a considerable portion of most investors’ portfolios.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/949609/investing-close-to-home-is-overrated

I think that "off color" is an very inaccurate description of what he said, especially the references to slavery and girl's pants. I never knew that he had significant institutional money ( I guess I never thought much about it but $100 billion is hard to find from individuals). I was never impressed with his pitch despite dozens of mailings over the years
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. The lesson for us mere mortals is don't put all you investment eggs in a one man show basket. How many other mutual funds and investment firms has this happened to!

Typical Marketwatch misinformation: The price for Mr Fisher is not $1B, but rather his commission on $1B.

@Rbrt: Here is the transcript.
Regards,
Ted
https://ritholtz.com/2019/10/transcript-binyamin-appelbaum/

Just listened to this - it was very good. Here’s the transcript
https://ritholtz.com/2019/10/transcript-binyamin-appelbaum/

Geez @Ted. While perhaps not the most enlightening post of all time, I’d much prefer hearing about the real-life issues others who own mutual funds deal with than to stare bleary-eyed at an endless sea of links. Hell, any kid over 12 could pull all that **** up on the internet in an hour’s time - maybe faster (if a really smart kid).
BTW - You could really improve those posts if you’d write an intelligent sentence along with each one telling your vast audience why “the linkster” selected this or that particular story to share and how investors may benefit. That, IMHO, would lead to wider appreciation of your work and would show a real commitment on your part to helping less experienced investors - which I don’t currently detect. Copy & paste just doesn’t achieve the same end. Again, kids know how to do that.
Ted, I know you will fault me for being overly-wordy, but please understand: (1) I’m trying to be as “diplomatic” here as possible so as not to ruffle your fragile feathers and (2) I want the advice I am rendering to be crystal clear to you.
-
@ Old_Joe, Thanks for sharing. I’m glad at least the folks at AC you’ve talked to seemed to really care about the issues. Knowing about your steps already taken or under consideration is no doubt useful to younger investors. I left AC angry about 15 or so years ago when they began imposing loads on some of their funds. That effectively locked me out of some pretty good newer offerings at AC, even though I’d invested with them for a decade or more. In hindsight, I might have pursued the issue more patiently and completely and resolved it with their people. But, afraid I have a pretty short fuse. :)

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ THIS POST IS IN VIOLATION OF MFO POSTING STANDARDS ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
⇒ This post had only 7 views and no comments. It has been artificially "bumped" into the COMMENTS + CATEGORY by the poster himself, without legitimate qualifying comments.
The MFO administrators have repeatedly requested this poster to observe the MFO posting standards. His refusal to honor those requests indicates his contempt for those standards.

On Tuesday, 10/15, I (and presumably all other AC account holders) received the following email:

Let’s Work Together to Protect Your Information
You want to feel confident that your information is being safeguarded. That’s why we’ve expanded our account security measures—and we need your help.
It’s simple: Just log in by December 31 to activate the additional measures. You’ll need to update your password and enroll in additional security options.

OK, so I went to the AC web page, and updated my password. No big deal. Then AC presented me with three security options, none of which, for various reasons, were workable for me.
That's it folks: we were now locked out of our account. No warning, no options, no way to even communicate with AC, other than by phone, which is not possible for me due to severe hearing issues.
My wife telephoned AC, informed them of the situation, and requested that they close the account immediately and transfer the entire balance electronically to a local account at JP Morgan Chase. We have had that AC account for over forty years, and it has consistently held between 400/500k. Fortunately there are no tax-sheltered IRA issues involved.
The AC service reps were very understanding, and tried their best to be helpful, but were not able to come up with an alternative. They agreed to close the account, advising that the electronic transfer to Chase would be made, and the transferred amount should be available at Chase by Friday.
Wednesday, 10/16: We received a phone call from AC, advising that they were working on some sort of fix which "should be available withing two or three weeks", and asked if we would cancel the account closure until then. We agreed.
Thursday, 10/17, 9:15AM: We received a phone call from AC, advising that they had modified the account sign-in procedure to include an old-fashioned "answer this secret question" safeguard.
I set that up a few minutes ago, and all seems well , at least for the time being.
We have to wonder how many other account AC holders threatened to leave American Century over this. Certainly must have been a substantial number, based on the speed of their response. It would be really interesting to know how much AUM money was at stake for AC. In any case, it certainly seems to have exceeded their "we don't really care" threshold.

FYI: The S&P 500 rose Thursday, stoked by solid earnings reports from Netflix, Morgan Stanley and others, as well as a preliminary Brexit deal that has the potential to remove a major obstacle facing investors.
More than a tenth of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported results so far and numbers are mostly coming in ahead of analysts’ expectations. That gave the stock market some support a day after weak retail sales data raised concerns that a major component of the economy, American consumers, were slowing their spending.
Investor sentiment in the U.S. and Europe also got a boost after U.K. and European Union negotiators reached an agreement on a new Brexit deal. However, mounting concerns about U.K. lawmakers’ support for the accord tempered the market’s reaction and led to some reversals.
Shares of health-care providers also resumed their rally after The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that several of them, including McKesson and Cardinal Health, would pay $18 billion to settle opioid litigation. 28
That combination pushed two-thirds of the stocks in the S&P 500 up on Thursday, giving the broad index a 0.28% gain.
The Nasdaq Composite also rose, adding 0.40%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, hung onto a small gain, rising 0.09%, or 23 points, to 27025 despite a pullback in shares of International Business Machines. The Dow component weighed on the blue-chip index after reporting lackluster earnings a day earlier.
Among the biggest gainers, shares of Netflix climbed 3.1% after the online video-streaming service posted solid earnings late Wednesday and expanded its subscriber base domestically and abroad, although growth fell short of its own target.
Morgan Stanley added 2% after it handily topped analysts’ profit forecasts.
Dover also notched a big gain, rising 5.3% after the industrial conglomerate raised the low end of its guidance and reported better-than-expected quarterly profits and revenue.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Health added 4.2%, while McKesson shares rose 3.8%. They are up 8.9% and 12%, respectively, for the week.
Of the 64 companies in the S&P 500 to post results so far, 52 have topped estimates, according to FactSet. Companies have a lower bar to beat, however, after analysts cut profit estimates in recent months. They lowered expectations across all 11 sectors of the S&P 500 to account for waning global growth and the U.S.’s prolonged trade fight with China.
The companies in the index are still on track to report a 4.7% decline in profits from a year earlier, the biggest profit pullback of the year, according to FactSet.
In Europe, assets ranging from the British pound and the euro to European stocks initially surged on the draft Brexit deal. But most of those assets gave up their gains following signs the deal will face some opposition in the U.K. Parliament.
The pound fluctuated between gains and losses against the dollar and was recently up 0.2%. The U.K.’s FTSE 250 index, a gauge that includes local companies with significant domestic operations, pared back gains to 0.2%. The broader Stoxx 600 closed down 0.1%.
Regards,
Ted
MarketWatch:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-futures-point-higher-after-uk-eu-strike-tentative-brexit-deal-2019-10-17/print
WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pound-dips-as-brexit-talks-hit-a-roadblock-11571303767
Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-16/asia-stock-futures-mixed-treasuries-advance-markets-wrap?srnd=premium
IBD:
https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/dow-jones-led-by-unitedhealth-walgreens-ibm-earnings-weigh/
CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/stock-market-economic-data-trade-war-fears-in-focus-on-wall-street.html
Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/wall-street-edges-higher-on-robust-earnings-brexit-deal-idUSKBN1WW1MV
U.K:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-stocks/tempered-brexit-hopes-drag-european-stocks-into-red-idUSKBN1WW0SB
Europe:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-stocks/tempered-brexit-hopes-drag-european-stocks-into-red-idUSKBN1WW0SB
Asia:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/asia-markets-economic-data-brexit-negotiations-trade-war.html
Bonds:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/us-bonds-traders-monitor-economic-data-trade-concerns.html
Currencies:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/sterling-soars-to-five-month-high-as-brexit-deal-is-agreed.html
Oil
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/oil-markets-us-oil-inventories-in-focus.html
Gold:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/17/gold-markets-us-economic-data-in-focus.html
Current Futures:
https://finviz.com/futures.ashx

FYI: (This Is A Follow-Up Article.)
I have given a lot of talks, a lot of times, in a lot of places and said stuff like this and never gotten that type of response,’ Fisher said initially
But now it’s starting to hit home. On Wednesday, the City of Boston pulled about $248 million in pension funds from Fisher Investments.
Earlier: Wealth manager Ken Fisher apologizes after backlash for off-color comments
Previously, Michigan’s state pension fund pulled about $600 million, and Philadelphia divested about $54 million. The exodus may not be over. Reuters reported that the city of Los Angeles was also re-considering its relationship with Fisher.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-price-tag-for-ken-fishers-lewd-remarks-nearly-1-billion-and-counting-2019-10-17/print

A storied name, but ...

Use of the Lebenthal name
The Fund’s use of the Lebenthal name is pursuant to a Trademark License Agreement between Lebenthal Partners, LLC and the Advisor. Neither the Trust, the Trustees, or the Advisor are affiliated with Lebenthal Partners, LLC.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bank-of-america-declares-the-end-of-the-60-40-standard-portfolio-2019-10-15
This time is different :-). Not sure I agree, but then again I always find bond market a little more difficult to understand.