This Is America’s Favorite Credit Card
According to consumers, it does pay to Discover.
For the second year in a row, Discover has ranked the highest in customer satisfaction among credit card issuers, according to the results of a new survey by J.D. Power.
Discover received a score of 828 out of 1,000 in the survey, based on credit card terms, billing and payment, rewards, benefits and services, and problem resolution. American Express placed second with a score of 820, and Chase ranked third at 792.
Overall satisfaction with credit cards hit a record high of 790, up from 778 last year.
Related: 3 High-Tech Ideas to Fraud-Proof Our Credit Cards
Consumers were more likely to use their rewards last year, with more than half having done so in the past six months. That could be because rewards are getting better as banks get more creative with wooing and keeping customers, many of whom are still lukewarm about spending.
“When customers feel the rewards are attractive and when they redeem rewards more frequently, satisfaction improves, they spend more, and they are more likely to recommend the card to friends and family members,” Jim Miller, J.D. Power senior director of banking services, said in a statement.
Customers who redeem rewards spend an average of $1,128 per month, compared to $645 by those who don’t redeem rewards.
Even though they’re more satisfied with their credit cards, Americans are still concerned about ID theft. Less than a third of those surveyed felt their personal information was very secure, and just 16 percent thought that security had improved since last year.
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Stat of the Day: 0.2%
The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”
Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.
Number of the Day: 44%
The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”
Number of the Day: 4,229
The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”
The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.
Number of the Day: $3 Billion
A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”
Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs
President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.
