Retirement

House Speaker John Boehner urged Congress' deficit "supercommittee" on Thursday to lay the groundwork for a broad overhaul of the U.S. tax code, rejecting Democrats' talk of tax increases but leaving open the possibility the government's take could rise as a result.

Turning a usually routine announcement into a pointed rebuttal of its GOP critics, the Obama administration said Thursday that premiums for popular Medicare Advantage insurance plans will drop for 2012, while enrollment is expected to rise.

Medicare Advantage premiums will be 4 percent lower in 2012, and enrollment is expected to rise 10 percent, according to an announcement made Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services.

In five years, the cost to taxpayers for Rhode Island's public retirement system will more than double if nothing is done to curb runaway pension costs.

Even as leading Democrats offered assurances to the contrary, government experts repeatedly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan could go belly up, saddling taxpayers with another underfunded benefit program, according to emails disclosed by congressional investigators.

The economy is poor, retirement funds are down, and wages have been stagnant for years. Workers across all generations are feeling the effects, especially the baby boomers who cant afford to retire, says John Sweeney, human resources knowledge adviser for the Society for Human Resource Management.