"Senate Republicans, White House Officials Meet Privately on Fiscal Deal," Paul M. Krawzak, CQ Roll Call, June 6, 201"Inflation Indexing Elements in Federal Entitlement Programs," Dawn Nuschler, Congressional Research Service, April 24, 2013..In addition, it would close Medicare Part D's "doughnut hole" two years earlier than under current law, and it would require drug manufacturers to provide new rebates to low-income beneficiaries. If adopted, the plan would also increase transparency in the prescription drug market by requiring manufacturers to publicly disclose the costs of research and development, discounts, and other data that determines drug pricing. In an attempt to increase competition within the drug market, it would also prohibit anti-competitive deals, reduce the period of market exclusivity for brand-name manufacturers from twelve years to seven, and eliminate rules that extend market exclusivity when manufacturers make minor changes to products..A question to ask yourself is how long you plan to stay in the home, and how many years remain on your current mortgage. If your current mortgage only has 10 or 15 years left to go, refinancing is likely to result in higher lifetime interest costs. When you get a new loan, most of the charges in the early years go towards interest costs. But if you only have a few years left on your current loan, you have moved past that stage and are making progress toward paying off your loan balance. If you refinance now, you start over from scratch.."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..To learn more about how work affects your benefits, see the publication "How Work Affects Your Benefits," SSA Publication No. 05-1006You can find it at or by calling toll free at..This week, The Senior Citizens League's legislative team met with several Members of Congress and their top staff to discuss key issues affecting seniors. In addition, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee held a hearing on the Medicare physician reimbursement system, and TSCL saw support grow for two key pieces of legislation..President Trump pledged that he would protect Social Security and Medicare when he ran for president in 201He has repeated that pledge several times since. But to advocate for a payroll tax cut that would bring both programs much closer to insolvency is not in keeping with his pledge..In 1988, a report by the former U. S. General Accounting Office, now the Government Accountability Office, cited an example of two sisters who started working at the same book bindery, on the same day, in October 195Audrey was born in March 1916, and Edith in June of 191The two had almost identical lifetime earnings. The younger sister Edith received a monthly benefit of 2.60, 1.80 less than her older sister Audrey, who received 4.40 per month..Two provisions of law, known as the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset unfairly reduce, or even completely eliminate, the Social Security benefits of millions of Americans who have devoted their careers to public service, in addition to having worked other jobs that withheld payroll taxes for Social Security.
