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Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson explained the origin of the issue in his opening statement, saying: "Both the House and Senate wanted to modify the benefit formula for those workers who spent part of their careers not paying Social Security taxes. I guess it should come as no surprise that the House and Senate didn't agree on the numbers … As tends to happen here they ended up somewhere in the middle.".cuts 0 billion from Medicare funding, and would cause the Medicare Trust Fund to go insolvent almost immediately,.While Medicare covers emergency room care, unless your father was admitted to the hospital as an inpatient, Medicare Part A may not have covered his hospital stay. If emergency room doctors held your dad "under observation" or as an "outpatient," then his stay was covered under Medicare Part B, and there may have been expensive bills for that hospital stay depending on what other type of insurance your dad had in addition to Medicare. In addition, Medicare has strict rules about the length of stays in the hospital, in order to qualify for limited nursing home coverage for rehabilitation. Medicare does not cover most long - term stays in nursing homes..TSCL believes stronger protections are needed and supports legislation that would prohibit using earnings from illegal work to determine Social Security benefits. What do you think? Take TSCL's 2015 Senior Survey now..On Thursday, more than ninety new lawmakers were sworn into office and members of the 113th Congress assembled for the first time. The House of Representatives gained eighty-two new lawmakers forty-seven Democrats and thirty-five Republicans and the Senate gained twelve newly elected lawmakers eight Democrats, three Republicans, and one Independent..A survey by The Senior Citizens League indicates that Social Security benefits have lost more than one-third of their purchasing power over the past decade. Do you support calculating the COLA using an index that more accurately measures seniors' cost of living?.For details, or to see if your Members of Congress will be holding town hall meetings during the summer recess, call their local offices. You can find contact information HERE..The Senior Citizens League is hopeful that Congress will pass responsible reforms to the Social Security and Medicare programs as soon as possible to strengthen benefits and restore the solvency of the Trust Funds. For more information about legislation that has been endorsed by The Senior Citizens League, visit the Bill Tracking section of our website..With the cash deficits of the disability trust fund growing and with the trust fund's projected insolvency in 2018, something will need to be done about the disability program, and soon.