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According to Bloomberg News, "The preoccupation with addressing the crisis could well crowd out other legislation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has planned to give his members a boost in the election year.."Caught Up In A Medicare Drug Fraud," Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, December 31, 2013..Adopting a more accurate and adequate COLA that protects seniors against inflation;.Visit to participate in TSCL's annual Senior Survey..A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that new payroll taxes would boost Social Security and Medicare's financial condition in the short term. But in the long term, federal spending would increase significantly as those affected by immigration policy changes become eligible for Social Security and Medicare..First, the payroll tax cut undermines the self–sustaining nature of Social Security and for the first time in more than seventy years, the program has become reliant on the federal government's general revenues. Under the law, the government must provide Social Security's Trust Fund with a dollar–for–dollar replacement for any lost revenues due to the tax cut. In 2011, the government's reimbursement funds accounted for 13 percent of Social Security's income. TSCL finds it troubling that the tax cut has disrupted the financing structure of Social Security, which has worked seamlessly since the program's inception..After more than a decade of failed attempts to repeal and replace the sustainable growth rate the flawed formula that sets payment rates for doctors who treat Medicare patients Congress has finally succeeded in passing legislation to do away with it once and for all. In April, lawmakers in both the House and the Senate adopted a bipartisan bill that will permanently repeal the SGR, provide doctors with modest 0.5 percent payment updates over the next five years, and incentivize payment models that reward the coordination of medical care..The CPI-E tends to grow about 0.25 percentage point more quickly than the CPI-W on average, but there can be wide differences between the two. For example, if the CPI-E were used to calculate the COLA it would be 1.2% in 2020, vs. 0.5% based on CPI-W data through March 201We had similar situation in 2016 and 2017 when the COLA was zero and 0.3%, respectively. The CPI-E would have yielded 0.6% instead of zero, and 1.5% instead of 0.3%. Those are not big differences, but like interest, compound over time. For anyone depending on Social Security for half of their income or more, every dollar makes a difference - and adding up over time may be enough to buy an extra week's worth of groceries..To even meet the statutory test of disability, the disabled worker must be unable to work or engage in any "substantial gainful activity." To qualify, disabled workers must have worked in the past, and be unable to work because of a medical condition that is expected to last more than one year or result in death.