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While benefits scheduled in the law for OASI [Old Age and Survivors Insurance] and DI [Disability Insurance] are obligations, such obligations can only be met to the extent that asset reserves are available in the OASI and DI Trust Funds. The law does not provide authority for the trust funds to borrow in order to pay benefits beyond the limited authority for "advance tax transfers.".12 Ways Seniors Would Get Less, Pay More.Years ago, drug legislation was passed that made importation of FDA approved drugs from Canada legal, but the Department of Health and Human Services secretary was required to certify the safety of the drugs. So far, no HHS secretary has been willing to do so, despite regular efforts to get importation going..Medicare Part B premiums jumped .10 per month in 2020 - one of the biggest increases in recent years. While the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment increased benefits by 1.6 percent in 2020, Medicare Part B premiums climbed 6.7 percent, more..The more you learn about the COLA, however, the more the anemic annual boosts of our past decade raise questions. The very first COLA ever paid was 77%. No, you read that right, this is not a typo. It became payable in 1950, one year before I was born, and a full ten years after Ida May Fuller received the nation's very first Social Security benefit check for .54 - the equivalent of 0.90 today..To determine if a portion of the taxpayer's Social Security benefits are taxable, half of Social Security benefits are added to the adjusted gross income, plus any tax - exempt interest, and certain other tax - exempt income. "Few people today think of an adjusted gross income of as little as ,000 -,000 as 'substantial' income," Johnson says. To calculate the taxable portion of benefits, taxpayers can find a worksheet in IRS publication 915..About 44 percent of TSCL Senior Survey respondents last year said that their Social Security benefit was lower in 2011 after deduction for Medicare premium payments. Another TSCL survey found that 44 percent of respondents also said they spent at least 0 a month on Medicare premiums and other out-of-pocket costs in 201"With the average benefit at ,100, about 17 million seniors are spending one-third of their Social Security benefit on Medicare costs, " Hyland observes..TSCL believes that benefits should be increased, not cut. To do this while providing enough funding to keep the program solvent for another 50 years, 78 percent of TSCL's survey participants favor raising the taxable cap on earnings so that Social Security taxes would be collected on all earnings. Currently only earnings up to 8,500 are taxed for Social Security. "This means the nation's highest earning people, like the CEOs of some of the nation's biggest companies, are pocketing a huge tax break on all earnings over the cap," says Cates..The federal government will work with the private sector and Congress to implement the recommendations and develop a strategy to create a robust and resilient pharmaceutical and active pharmaceutical ingredient supply chain, including facilitating adoption of novel methods for commercial production of pharmaceuticals and biologics.