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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..Put a medical emergency plan into place, before you need one: Having no plan for emergencies, especially if you live alone, or with a spouse who also needs special care means you need to have a medical emergency plan in case something happens to you. Often doctors will order observation care when you are too sick to safely go home. Although this can still occur even with the best-laid plan, you may be able to reduce the length of an observation stay if you have someone who will take care of you once you are released..The big dental expense is when you need more extensive work like crowns or root canals. Yet dental insurance often comes with waiting periods and won't cover fillings for the first six months of a policy and may not offer coverage for other procedures for up to 18 months. Many plans also have very low annual caps on care of ,000, meaning that once your dental bills exceed that amount you pay the rest of the bills in full..Despite the fact that so much urgently needs to be done, it is disturbing that the Senate plans to be out for at least 13 of the 34 weeks between now and the election..With both chambers of Congress adjourned, the 113th Congress has officially come to a close. Lawmakers are expected to return to Capitol Hill on Monday, January 5th, to begin the first session of the 114th Congress. TSCL looks forward to working with both new and veteran lawmakers in the New Year, and we will continue to advocate tirelessly on behalf of our members and supporters in 2015..This week, the Social Security Administration announced that benefits will increase by 2% percent beginning in January 201In addition, The Senior Citizens League announced its support for one new bill that would improve the integrity of the Social Security program..Get the Seasonal Flu Vaccine but Not Just Yet."While hold harmless is very valuable protection, the lack of an adequate COLA to begin with, and rapidly growing Part B costs, will keep millions of beneficiaries stuck in a no-growth rut in 2018," Johnson says. The Senior Citizens League is advocating legislation that would provide a more fair and adequate COLA, by tying the annual adjustment to the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly. Projections for The Senior Citizens League show that by using the CPI-E, Social Security benefits would be about 9 percent higher over 25 years. A benefit of ,300 in 2017 would be about 2 per month more using the CPI-E at the end of the 25 year period instead of the current method. To learn more, visit..Using this approach would put low to middle benefit recipients on more equal footing. The draw- back however, is that people with higher benefits would experience a benefit cut. They would not receive a COLA based on the benefit that they actually receive, and the dollar amount would be lower than what they would have received under current law. While that loss would be relatively small at first, it would compound and rapidly grow deeper over time. It would tend to lower the total amount of income that retirees with higher benefits could expect to receive from Social Security. This sort of proposed change to the COLA would quite likely encounter fierce push back, particularly from those affected, and even from middle-income people who delayed their retirement perhaps by as much as 4 years or more to allow their benefit to grow to its maximum.