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Find out if your drug plan offers mail order: If your drug plan offers mail order you can often significantly cut your costs by using it. Generally, mail order requires a 90- day prescription, but often your cost is the same as what you would pay for a 60-day supply from a retail pharmacy..You can work while you receive Social Security benefits. When you do, your benefits may be reduced if you earn more than certain limits. But after you reach full retirement age, the Social Security Administration recalculates your benefits and it will be increased to account for the benefits withheld due to excess earnings. The work you do now could mean a higher benefit for you in the future, and that will be important in helping you to afford health care and other big cost increases later on..One of the first tax cuts to expire under the recent tax law is likely to disproportionately affect older taxpayers and others with the highest healthcare costs starting in 2019, says The Senior Citizens League. "The medical expense deduction will become less generous in 2019, and that is likely to affect older taxpayers, because they tend to have high medical expenses," says Mary Johnson, a Social Security policy analyst for The Senior Citizens League. "A less generous healthcare cost deduction could mean higher taxable income next year," she cautions..Due to a loop hole in Social Security law, the pending controversial Totalization Agreement, signed in June 2004, would allow millions of Mexican workers, and dependents on their accounts, to become entitled to Social Security benefits that include credit for earnings received while working illegally. If allowed to take effect, TSCL believes hundreds of billions in Social Security benefits are at stake..For the sixth consecutive year, Social Security beneficiaries will receive a cost-of-living adjustment that's a near-record low. Benefits will rise in January by a meager 1.7% after a 1.5% increase in 201In fact, inflation has been growing so slowly that the annual increase has averaged only 1.4% per year since 2010 - less than half the 3 percent average during the prior decade. In 2010 and 2011, benefits didn't increase at all, and a 1.7% increase next year won't pull up the five-year average..According to an article they wrote in The Hill, "Ten thousand Americans turn 65 every day, which means the number of Medicare beneficiaries who need easy access to vaccines is constantly increasing. Vaccines are particularly important for older adults because our immune systems weaken with time. Adults age 50 and over are particularly susceptible to many vaccine-preventable diseases and account for a disproportionate number of the deaths and illnesses they cause. This is why older adults are most at risk of developing severe illness from coronavirus..The federal government remained partially closed this week for the fifth straight week. It remains the longest government shutdown in United States history, and at the time of writing this week's legislative update, only minor progress had been made towards a bipartisan deal to end it..Senator says the Senate will not get its work done on time –.So, while we like the news that they still want to act this year, TSCL is taking a wait-and-see position.