Earlier this month, author Percival Everett put on a tuxedo to attend the Academy Awards with his wife, novelist Danzy Senna.

First-time filmmaker Cord Jefferson, who adapted Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure” to make the film “American Fiction,” won for best adapted screenplay and delivered a rousing acceptance speech that was one of the evening’s highlights.

“I like the film quite a bit, and I appreciate the fact that it is not my novel. Cord Jefferson mined my novel and took what he needed to make his film,” says Everett. “And that’s what he’s supposed to do.”

Just don’t expect to see Everett, who is not known for seeking the spotlight, appearing at the Hollywood event in the future.

“We did go, and there’s no need to ever go again,” he laughs, adding that he had a “fine” time. “The attention to the work is nice, but … it was hard to sit through. But at least in between during the commercial breaks, you can wander outside.”

(L-R) Percival Everett and Danzy Senna attend the 96th Annual Academy Awards on March 10, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by JC Olivera/Getty Images)

One of the nation’s most acclaimed novelists as well as the Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California, Everett’s work ethic is legendary: He’s published more than 30 books, and his most recent novels — “Dr. No,” “The Trees,” and “Telephone” — have landed on various shortlists including for the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize, the NBCC Award for Fiction and more. (And he still finds time to paint, fish and play guitar.)

When we meet up on Zoom to discuss his just-published new novel, “James,” Everett is dressed casually and seated in his South Pasadena home office surrounded by books, assorted gear and stringed instruments. In the book, which may be his best yet, the story of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is narrated by the enslaved character Jim rather than Huck Finn.

In Everett’s version, Jim — or as the character writes when he puts pencil to paper, “James” — reveals himself to be a richer, more complex character: He’s a considerate and loving parent, a teacher and thinker, a builder and fixer of most anything and a self-taught reader and writer (through his surreptitious visits to Judge Thatcher’s library). He is also a determined man wary of the ways in which slavery not only robs the enslaved of their physical freedom and personal safety, but also how the barbaric practice aims to stifle intellectual and emotional freedom, too.

Throughout our conversation, Everett provided thoughtful, wryly humorous responses as we discussed the novel, Twain, “The Andy Griffith Show” and more. (And full disclosure: While this was our first-ever conversation, our spouses were once employed at the same college and know each other.)

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Was ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ a book you had strong feelings about? What drew you to writing your own version?

Well, you know, it has an iconic stature in the literary culture. It’s a novel we know even if we don’t know it. I read it as a little kid in an abridged version, which didn’t do anything for me. 

I love Twain. I didn’t like ‘Tom Sawyer’ at all, but I loved ‘Roughing It,’ I loved ‘Life on the Mississippi,’ and there was another one that was just crazy, ‘The Mysterious Stranger,’ that no one talks about, ‘The Diaries of Adam and Eve.’ Hilarious stuff.

And so, much of my humor was shaped by Twain, and then when I was older, I did read the unabridged ‘Huck Finn’ and even as a teenager, the depiction of Jim, naively on my part, is problematic. It’s not until I was a little more mature and understood Twain and his position in the culture that I could understand that depiction. Maybe not excuse it completely, but understand it.

Q. Can you talk a little more about that?

The novel really is America wandering through this landscape, trying to figure itself out. That’s what Huck is. Huck is the quintessential adolescent American. And I don’t mean 12-year-old American; I mean, 12-year-old America, that young country trying to come to grips with race. And so it really is an important text. 

It’s the first novel where it’s about a person who is subjected to slavery and not about slavery. And so with that in my head, I just wondered if anyone had written it from Jim’s point of view. Since then, I found out that there is a short story — I still haven’t seen it – about Jim after the novel. But I was shocked to find out that no one had written one — and then I realized I hadn’t thought of it either, so I couldn’t really blame anybody. 

Q. One of the most striking things about the character Jim is how you evoke his concern for his family, for others, and for Huck.

Even in ‘Huck Finn,’ the only positive father figure — well, maybe Judge Thatcher, peripherally — that Huck has is Jim. I suppose in some readings it can be reduced to ‘companion,’ but the only positive male role model for him is Jim.

Q. People — like Tom Sawyer, Pap or other adults in his life — are often telling Huck things that aren’t true, but Jim, who is narrating and relating his own story, is possibly the only person telling the truth. 

I hadn’t thought about that so much, but I like that take on it. For Jim, there’s something at stake in his being able to explore ideas in a literary way. At the other end of that, for him, is a freedom that he can’t physically enjoy.

Q. Can you talk about the elements you introduced to the story and what you decided to leave out?

Well, since in the novel, Jim and Huck are separated a lot of the time, those were easy. And since it’s from Jim’s point of view, the dangers inherent in any of those scenes where they are together are different, as well as that it’s through the eyes of an adult rather than a child.

This is not a complaint at all about Twain, but I’m thinking less to entertain than I am to interrogate. And so when I have a chance to work with [con men characters] the duke and the dauphin, my mission is different from Twain’s.

Q. Your novel is affecting, harrowing and, it has to be said, often extremely funny. How did you navigate all those elements?

I’m pathologically ironic, and I think any humor that I employ is a result of that irony. I would be a terrible comedian. I’m no good at making up jokes, but just observing an absurd world.

Do you remember “The Andy Griffith Show”? They can wear on you if watch them, but one of the things that I found great about that show — and I found out later that Griffith worked hard on this — is that there’s not a single joke in it. It’s all story-generated — all the humor is story-generated, except for Don Knotts’ physical humor. That was kind of an object lesson to see that.

Q. Jim has hallucinations in which he debates the philosophers Locke and Voltaire. What made you decide to do that?

Well, again, irony: The Declaration of Independence, being penned by the gnostic Thomas Jefferson, a figure of the Enlightenment like Voltaire and Locke who can espouse equality among men but yet find ways to rationalize slavery.

Q. You’ve mentioned that you have a tradition where you will write a book in the place you first started it. Where did you start this book and write it?

I was at the coffee table. Yeah, that’s pretty much where it happened.

Q. Earlier, you said you don’t remember your books, and I wonder if that’s similar to a reader’s experience — how we can be invested in a book only to find later that it’s hard to recall details of what happened in the story. Is that like what you’re describing?I think that’s probably close to it. I know that sometimes when people remind me of things in my novels, it takes me a while to catch up. Sometimes it’ll be vivid, other times it’ll be completely new, and I kind of like that. I especially like when they have ideas about what it means that I never thought of. I immediately take credit for it: “This is a great idea; of course, I meant that.” [laughs]

Q. Is that disorienting?

Oh, no. It’s just fascinating. People see their own worlds; the work doesn’t exist without a reader and meaning can’t happen without a reader. I wasn’t writing it to convince myself of anything. Lord knows why I was writing it, but there it is.

Q. So after you’ve written it, you no longer need to try to control it.

I can’t control it, so why worry about it? I suppose I could go hang out in front of bookstores and explain things to the six people who leave with my book. [laughs]

Q. If you do, please call me. That sounds great.

Anything I say about one of my works can be completely disregarded.

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Julie Appleby | (TNS) KFF Health News

In early 2019, Jennifer Hepworth and her husband were stunned by a large bill they unexpectedly received for their daughter’s prescription cystic fibrosis medication. Their payment had risen to $3,500 from the usual $30 for a month’s supply.

That must be a mistake, she told the pharmacy. But it wasn’t. It turned out that the health insurance plan through her husband’s job had a new program in which it stopped applying any financial assistance they received from drugmakers to the family’s annual deductible.

Insurers or employers can tap into funds provided to patients by drugmakers through copay assistance programs, which were designed by the companies to help patients afford increasingly expensive medications. But, because those payments are no longer counted toward the deductible, patients must pay an amount out-of-pocket, too, often for the same drugs. Those deductibles or other out-of-pocket costs can easily run into thousands of dollars.

Here’s what that meant for Hepworth, who lives in Utah. Before the change, the drugmaker’s copay assistance would almost immediately meet her family’s deductible for the year, because both Hepworth and her daughter need expensive medications. As a result, the family was responsible for copays of only 20% of their medical costs instead of the 100% required by their plan until they met their deductible. By the middle of the year, the family would have reached the plan’s out-of-pocket maximum of nearly $10,000 and would no longer owe any copays.

Hepworth ended up paying the $3,500 to the pharmacy, equivalent to the family’s annual deductible, because she didn’t want to stop giving her daughter a treatment that could extend her life. “We were struggling and everything went on credit cards.”

Why did the insurer do this?

Employers or the health insurance plans they hire are saving 10% to 15% of the cost of prescription plan claims by using these copay accumulator programs, said Edward Kaplan, a senior vice president at Segal, a benefits consulting firm. Even so, Kaplan doesn’t recommend that his clients, who include public and private employers, take advantage of the program because of the increasing pushback from lawmakers and advocacy groups. However, the majority of insured people are in plans governed by these types of programs, according to Avalere, a consulting firm.

Nineteen states now limit copay accumulator programs for some insurance plans. And patient advocacy groups have won a favorable court ruling against the programs. States’ limits on the practice, however, do not apply to larger, self-insured job-based plans, through which many Americans have coverage.

Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both chambers of Congress that would require financial assistance to count toward deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. Called the Help Ensure Lower Patient Copays Act, it would govern plans that are exempt from state rules.

Change is unlikely to come soon.

Insurers and employers have long complained that copay assistance programs are mainly a marketing ploy by the drug industry that encourages patients to stay on costly drugs when lower-cost alternatives might be available. Insurers say capturing more of that money themselves can help slow the rising price of premiums.

In a recent letter to regulators, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association called the practice “a vital tool in keeping health insurance affordable.”

Patient advocacy groups, including the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute and two diabetes groups, disagreed and took a case against copay accumulator programs to U.S. District Court last fall.

And “we won,” said Carl Schmid, executive director of the institute. The groups argued the practice can cause some patients to skip their medications because of the unexpected costs they must now shoulder.

Some critics say it’s a form of double dipping because even though the patient hasn’t personally paid out-of-pocket, “that payment was made, and it was made on your behalf. I think that should get counted,” said Rachel Klein, deputy executive director with the AIDS Institute, an advocacy group.

The court decision, Schmid said, essentially overturns a 2021 provision in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rules that allowed insurers to expand the practice to cover almost any drug. Previous rules from 2020 would now be in effect, said Schmid, and those rules say copay assistance should count toward the deductible for all drugs for which there is no medically appropriate generic alternative available.

Even so, billing changes for many insured patients may take a while.

While the Biden administration dropped an appeal of the court decision, it has filed motions noting “it does not intend to take any enforcement action against issuers or plans” until regulators draw up new rules, said Ellen Montz, deputy administrator and director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at CMS, in a written statement to KFF Health News.

A version of these programs being used by insurers, sometimes called a “maximizer,” works a bit differently.

Under a maximizer program, insurers partner with outside firms such as PrudentRX and SaveOnSP. The programs declare certain drugs or classes of drugs “nonessential,” thus allowing them to circumvent some Affordable Care Act rules that limit patient cost sharing. That lets the insurer collect the maximum amount from a drugmaker’s assistance program, even if that is more than the patient would owe through deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums had the drugs remained essential benefits. These partner companies also work with large pharmacy benefit managers that oversee prescription services for employers.

Those maximizer payments do not count toward a patient’s deductible. Many insurers don’t charge patients an additional copay for the drugs deemed nonessential as a way of enticing them to sign up for the programs. If patients choose not to enroll, they could face a copayment far higher than usual because of the “nonessential” designation.

“This is a loophole in the ACA that they are exploiting,” said Schmid of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, referring to the Affordable Care Act. Johnson & Johnson filed a lawsuit in federal court in New Jersey in 2022 against such a maximizer program, saying it coerced patients into participating because if they didn’t they faced higher copays. The drugmaker warned it might reduce the amount of overall assistance available to patients because of the increasingly common practice.

Now, though, a provision in the proposed 2025 federal rules governing health insurers says plans must consider any covered drug an “essential benefit.” If finalized, the provision would hamper insurers’ ability to collect the maximum amount of drugmaker assistance.

Employers are watching for the outcome of the lawsuit and the proposed federal rules and don’t yet have clarity on how rulings or regulations will affect their programs, said James Gelfand, president and chief executive of the ERISA Industry Committee, which advocates for large, self-insured employers.

___

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Kate Ashford | NerdWallet

A 2023 report from investment firm Vanguard estimates that about a quarter of Americans age 60 and over could move to a cheaper housing market and use the equity in their homes to upsize their retirement savings — making retirement more secure and enjoyable.

Those with home prices near the national median could have cleared about $99,000 in equity, on average, in 2019 (the year the data was gathered). Homeowners in top-priced markets could have cleared an impressive $346,000, on average.

“We’re at a peak of where housing prices have been, ever, in history,” says Matthew Gottshall, a certified financial planner in Westlake, Ohio. “It’s been more and more common for people to weigh the option of, ‘Do I downsize? Do I take the equity that’s grown in my house?’”

Here are the steps to take as you consider the option.

Assess the market

Selling (and potentially downsizing) your home and pocketing the equity is a good strategy in a market where you can make it work. This is easier in pricier housing areas, when you may be able to trade your high-value home for a smaller place in a more affordable market. Vanguard’s analysis noted that relocators in California, for instance, were more successful at clearing equity in their homes than those in lower-priced markets like New Mexico and Texas.

Selling property also isn’t a slam-dunk task. “Just because you want $800,000 for your home, the market may not care,” says Andrew Herzog, a CFP in Plano, Texas. “You may be in the mood to move, but if nobody wants to buy your place in the first place, you’ve got nothing.”

Additionally, you have to make sure you can afford to buy a replacement home that you like. Check home prices in your desired location before putting the “For Sale” sign out.

“My parents — the price of their house has gone up fairly substantially, but everything they want to sell and move into has increased even faster,” Gottshall says.

Research the costs

Make sure you understand property taxes and the basic costs of living in your desired locale, as well as the costs for selling your home. (Hint: The real estate agent commission is generally about 5.5%, although that may change after the recent legal settlement by the National Association of Realtors.) Also, if you’re picking up a mortgage on the new home, there will be closing costs, and rates are probably higher than they were when you last purchased property. All these numbers could chip away at your net sale profit.

“We’re at a place where 30-year mortgages are at 6.5% to 7%,” Gottshall says. “It could very well mean your monthly payment on a much lower-priced house is almost equivalent to the home that you’re in right now.”

In an area with a very low cost of living, do some digging to make sure you understand what to expect from the municipality. Are the streets and sidewalks maintained? How is garbage collected? Is the fire department responsive?

“I had one client who had a beautiful home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” says Ralph Bender, a CFP in Temecula, California. “I said, ‘Wow, you must like it, you basically pay no taxes down there,’ and he said ‘Yes, but you get no services either.’”

Weigh the current price of upkeep

Keeping your house could mean maintaining a big yard, replacing an old roof and managing a second-story primary bedroom into your later years. Selling gives you a chance to downsize your responsibilities and look for something that makes it easier to age in place.

“You have people with these four- and five-bedroom houses that no longer have kids staying with them,” Gottshall says. Moving to a home with less to clean and fewer stairs can make it easier to stay in your home long term.

Think about family

You don’t necessarily have to move closer to loved ones — but it’s helpful. Bender recalls a client who moved with his wife to South Carolina because they liked to golf. When the client died, his wife moved back to California because she didn’t know anyone in the area.

“There’s got to be a support network for the family,” Bender says. A community, he says, encourages social participation and contributes to overall longevity.

Test-drive the location

If you’re buying in a new city, visit in every season to ensure you like the area year-round, even in the snow or blazing sun. Vacation there if you can.

“Every area has its negatives,” Bender says. “You have to find out what they are before you move there and be prepared to deal with them.”

Hazel Secco, a CFP in Hoboken, New Jersey, remembers clients who moved from New Jersey to North Carolina and found that the lifestyle wasn’t what they expected. “I think they were visualizing and thinking about the difference theoretically, but I don’t think they fully grasped the implications,” Secco says. “They had to come back after selling the North Carolina [house], so it just ended up costing so much more.”

This article was written by NerdWallet and was originally published by The Associated Press.

 

The article Selling Your Home Could Boost Your Nest Egg — But Is It Worth It? originally appeared on NerdWallet.