If the Social Security COLA were based on a more accurate measure of inflation for senior citizens, this year's increase would not have been zero it would have been around 0.6 percent according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Do you support legislation that would base the COLA on a more accurate inflation index like the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly?.Research Medicare Advantage health plans that offer some dental benefits. Medicare's fall Open Enrollment period starts October 15th and runs through December If you are already enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan it's a good idea to compare plans in your area every year anyway, and switch if you can find better coverage at a lower cost. You need to do the math on the deductibles, co-pays or co-insurance for the comprehensive benefits offered, including hospital, doctors, outpatient services, and prescription drugs that you already take before switching. Pay close attention to the fine print on additional benefits. Those dental benefits may only be in the form of discounts with network providers. TSCL strongly recommends AGAINST dropping a Medigap supplement to enroll in a Medicare Advantage plan solely based on additional benefits like dental coverage. Those additional benefits can end suddenly, especially when plans cut costs to compensate for lower government reimbursements, so don't bet your Medigap coverage on them..Later in the week, the President doubled down on his promise to try and cut prices on branded prescription drugs. Word is out that the President is considering an executive order to combat the problems of high cost drugs sold to Medicare and other government programs..The last time the Medicare Part A Trust Fund was forecast to become insolvent was in 200At the time, the Part A Trust Fund was forecast to become insolvent by 201Lucky for us that never happened - in 2017 at least. Congress enacted the 2010 Affordable Care Act which changed Medicare taxes in two ways. It added a 0.9% surtax to the amount of Medicare payroll taxes paid by high earning individuals with wages over 0,000. This was on top of the 1.45% that workers currently pay on their wages. A second provision affecting the more affluent, imposed a 3.8% tax on a portion of net investment income. Estates and trusts can also be subject to this tax..To help protect the buying power of benefits, TSCL supports legislation that would base COLAs on the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly..Senator McConnell's comments came a day after the U.S. Treasury Department released an analysis that revealed the corporate tax cuts under the new tax law had a significant impact on the deficit in 201Supporters of the 2017 tax legislation sold the bill saying that the tax cuts would spur economic growth so much that it would pay for itself. But the Treasury Department recently reported that the U.S. budget deficit grew to 9 billion in Trump's first full fiscal year as president, as a result of the tax cuts, spending increases, and rising interest payments for the national debt..This week, lawmakers in the Senate voted on three health reform bills that would have repealed and replaced parts of the ACA if enacted. All three of the bills the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the Obamacare Repeal and Reconciliation Act, and the Health Care Freedom Act better known as the "skinny repeal" bill failed to win passage on the Senate floor..Government economists not only changed the math, they changed the underlying concept of the consumer price index itself. While the CPI formerly measured price changes of a fixed market basket of items from one period to the next, today the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses formulas more consistent with a theoretical cost-of-living concept. And because it is theoretical, it uses estimates and produces data that is subject to two revisions..The new analysis by Johnson compared the growth of retiree benefits from 2009 through 2020 to learn how much more in income retirees would receive if COLAs had grown by a more typical rate of 3 percent. The analysis found that an "average" retiree benefit of ,075 per month in 2009 has grown to ,249 in 2020 but, if COLAs had averaged 3 percent, that benefit would be 7 per month higher today, and those individuals would have received ,227.40 more in Social Security income over the 2010 to 2020 period.
