In addition to the care given at the hospital, the staff travels to nursing homes and other care facilities to administer needed medical tests. This hospital alone is responsible for more than 250,000 lab tests a year. When I spoke to the hospital's CEO he told me the hospital doesn't recover its costs on those tests. "We do them because the patients in the nursing homes need us," he said..TSCL understands that the budget deficit is growing out of hand. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the massive tax reform and budget bills recently adopted by Congress will cost the federal government an estimated .7 trillion over the next ten years. However, TSCL firmly believes that a constitutional balanced budget amendment, that would disproportionately impact seniors and limit the ability of Congress to respond to economic downturns, is not the solution to the problem..This late into 2018, one way to prevent a penalty is to pay an estimated, or additional payment that brings your estimated tax payments to least 100 percent of your prior year tax liability, or 110 percent of the prior year liability, if you believe you will have higher income in 201If you think you may have underpaid during the year, there's still time to make an estimated payment by January 15th, 2019 to stop penalties from accruing. To prevent the same problem next year, consider adjusting withholding taxes from pension or annuities, as well as withdrawals from retirement accounts..Just hours after the trustees released their annual reports on Wednesday, members of the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee met with Chief Actuary Stephen Goss to discuss the findings. Many of those present at the hearing expressed their commitment to addressing the program's funding shortfall. Chairman Sam Johnson said, "The longer we wait, the tougher it will get to fix Social Security. So the sooner we act the better." Chief Actuary Goss agreed, saying: "The trustees have consistently advised that enacting changes soon, even if with delayed effective dates, will allow more options to be considered, more advance warning for those affected, and a more gradual phase-in of adjustments.".Members of the Senate will return to Capitol Hill on September 6th, and Members of the House of Representatives will return on September 7th. TSCL would like to remind you to approach your Members of Congress at local events and request their support for a fair Social Security cost-of-living adjustment and other key issues..Until then, many Members of Congress will be holding town hall meetings to address the questions and concerns of their constituents. TSCL encourages its members and supporters to attend these town halls and to ask questions of their elected officials about important Social Security and Medicare issues, like the following four….Increasing the payroll tax cap. Currently, the amount of earnings subject to payroll tax is 7,200, and the Social Security payroll tax is not applied to annual income over that amount. In a recent survey of TSCL's members, 73% said they would like to see the 6.2 percent payroll tax applied to all earnings in order to increase the solvency of the program..With Medicare and other insurers scrambling to control costs, "observation stays" in the hospital have become a loophole that could leave you footing the bill for thousands in uncovered costs. Your hospital status - whether you are an inpatient or an outpatient - makes a huge difference in how much you will have to pay for hospital services like X-rays, drugs and lab tests. But figuring out whether you are an inpatient or outpatient, believe it or not, isn't always clear..On Thursday, the Ways and Means Committee held a long overdue hearing on the Social Security 2100 Act. The bill was introduced by Congressman John Larson in January of this year. A companion bill was introduced in the Senator by Senator Richard Blumenthal. If adopted these bills would strengthen and reform Social Security by providing beneficiaries with a 2 percent benefit increase, would base the cost-of-living on the CPI-E, create a new minimum benefit set 125 percent of the poverty line and cut taxes for beneficiaries. Increase costs to the program would be paid for my applying the payroll tax to income over 400,000 and gradually increase the payroll tax rate to 7.4 percent.
