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Take minimum required distributions on time. Once you turn age 70 ½, everyone with a traditional IRA must begin taking required minimum distributions. Failure to do so results in a tax penalty equal to 50% of the required distribution amount..This is not a sustainable spending pattern for retired and disabled households. In recent years, Social Security recipients more typically reported that housing and medical expenses, not food, increased the fastest and were the two top cost concerns..This week, lawmakers in the Senate voted on three health reform bills that would have repealed and replaced parts of the ACA if enacted. All three of the bills the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Obamacare Repeal and Reconciliation Act, and the Health Care Freedom Act better known as the "skinny repeal" bill failed to win passage on the Senate floor..Nearly 1.6 million Americans have Type 1 diabetes, including about 187,000 children and adolescents, according to the American Diabetes Association. Patients with Type 1 diabetes cannot make their own insulin and rely on manufactured versions to survive.."It's about time," states Johnson. At the time of passage of the Affordable Care Act, this tax was widely referred to as a "Medicare" tax in the media, by tax and investment professionals, and, many lawmakers sold it to the public that way. "Now those revenues are needed by the Medicare Part A Hospital Insurance Trust Fund," says Johnson. Part A is three years from insolvency and faces an estimated funding gap of more than 5 billion over the next ten years..Meal and nutrition programs.Increasing the payroll tax cap. Currently, the amount of earnings subject to payroll tax is 7,200, and the Social Security payroll tax is not applied to annual income over that amount. In a recent survey of TSCL's members, 73% said they would like to see the 6.2 percent payroll tax applied to all earnings in order to increase the solvency of the program..This week, one new cosponsor Rep. John Tierney signed on to the Strengthening Social Security Act, bringing the total up fifty-seven. If signed into law, the bill would reform the Social Security program in three ways: it would adjust the benefit formula, resulting in more generous monthly benefits; it would adopt the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers, resulting in more accurate cost-of-living adjustments, and it would lift the cap on income subject to the payroll tax. H.R. 3118 would extend the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund responsibly, without cutting benefits for seniors..You need skilled nursing services, and/or skilled therapy care on an intermittent basis.