In April, the Medicare Trustees estimated that the standard monthly Medicare Part B premium, which covers doctors and outpatient services, would rise .70 - from 4.60 in 2020, to 3.30 in 202The April forecast, however, was made prior to the coronavirus, and did not factor in the impact of COVID-19 on expected medical costs or inflation..Compare your drug and health plan options during the Medicare Open Enrollment period October 15th - December 7th. Does your current drug plan cover expensive new prescriptions? If not, you need to check your other options. Chances are another plan will. Use the Drug and Health Plan Finder at. Make sure you carefully enter every prescription drug you take in order to get a custom comparison of your best drug plan choices. Costs can vary by hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, and you may be very surprised by the savings from switching to a better plan. You can get unbiased help to compare your coverage. Call your Area Agency on Aging and ask for the help of a State Health Insurance Assistance Program counselor, or visit online..Garden: A recent long-term study followed more than 2800 men and women aged 60 and older for 16 years. The study measured admission to hospital, and nursing homes with any kinds of dementia, while assessing a variety of lifestyle factors. Researchers found daily gardening to represent the single biggest risk reduction for dementia in both sexes, reducing incidence by 36%. Gardening involves many critical functions, including improved vitamin D levels from exposure to the sun for good health, exercise, learning and observation, problem solving, sensory awareness and maintenance of sanity, that its benefits are believed to a synthesis of various aspects..The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently announced that the standard Medicare Part B premium will be 8.50 in 2021, an increase of .90 per month from 4.60 in 2020. That increase, which I earlier feared would be considerably more, was restricted by legislation enacted last fall. But even with legislation to keep the Medicare Part B flat, the Part B premium still went up 2.6% over 2020, twice as much as the annual cost-of-living adjustment. This trend of Medicare costs increasing several times faster than Social Security benefits creates chronic headaches for retirees, as the Medicare Part B premium consumes a growing share of Social Security benefits..The House-Senate Conference Committee met multiple times this week for public negotiations, but little progress seems to have been made. The group of twenty must come to an agreement before the end of the month in order to: continue unemployment payments, block a Medicare doctor payment cut, and extend the Social Security payroll tax cut..COLAs are calculated using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners. This simply does not make sense for seniors. This method of calculation considers spending habits of younger workers who are more likely to spend their dollars on electronic devices and consumer goods. Seniors are more likely to spend money on medical services and housing expenses. The prices of these items rise significantly higher than what the CPI-W calculates..Lawmakers at this week's hearings on both sides of the aisle seemed committed to working together to stabilize the marketplace in the weeks ahead. In total, thirty-one Senators reached out to lawmakers on the HELP Committee to be included in the discussions, and the bipartisan group hopes to have a stabilization plan drafted by next week and signed into law by the end of September. For progress updates, follow TSCL on Facebook or Twitter..This week, lawmakers continued working on an omnibus spending bill, and The Senior Citizens League endorsed new legislation that would give Social Security beneficiaries an emergency cost-of-living adjustment next year..Re-opening is expected to be slow and painstaking as providers and states try different approaches to keep patients and staff safe. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently released a bulletin about what patients should know about seeking healthcare during the pandemic, which can be found online at:.
