When Vic Paganucci of Norwalk, Conn., was given a chance to take early retirement last spring, he jumped at it. He was weary of his two-hour commute to Wall Street and no longer enjoyed his job as an insurance broker.
But now, at 58, he's having second thoughts. In part, it's because he misses the fulfillment a job provides. But increasingly, money is a concern, too.
"I have no problem paying the bills, but the market seems to go down endlessly," he says. "Sometimes I wish I had looked for a job rather than just retiring."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/retirement/2008-08-26-retired-too-soon_N.htm
A new report published by the non-profit group RTI International and government scientists shows that if Congress is looking for ways to control health care costs, they should take a good long look at obesity. According to the study, Americans who are as little as 30 or more pounds overweight cost the country an estimated $147 billion in medical bills last year, a figure that has doubled over the last decade. 
A recent article in The New Yorker titled “The Cost Conundrum,” seeks to answer the question of the connection between healthcare cost and quality through a case study of one of the most expensive health care markets in the country. McAllen, Texas, has one of the lowest household income averages in the country at twelve thousand per capita a year, yet, in 2006, Medicare spent almost twice the national average on expenses per enrollee, to the tune of fifteen thousand. What caused this extreme unbalance in healthcare expenses? Were the citizens simply less healthy? Or were they just receiving much better care?