News

How Did the Supreme Court Decision About the Affordable Care Act Affect Medicare?."No Limit: Medicare Part D Enrollees Exposed to High Out-of-Pocket Drug Costs Without a Hard Cap On Spending," Kaiser Family Foundation, November 201"Summary of Recent and Proposed Changes to Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage and Reimbursement," Kaiser Family Foundation, February 2018..Addressing prescription drug prices is also one of my top priorities as Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The Committee launched a comprehensive investigation of the prescription drug industry's pricing practices in January of this year, focusing on the drugs that are the costliest to Medicare. In January I convened the Committee's first hearing of the 116th Congress on this topic, inviting AARP's National Volunteer President to testify about the challenges seniors face in affording their drugs..The big difference between the CPI-W used to calculate your COLA, and the CPI-E, is the weight or portion of income that the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives to each category. While seniors occasionally benefit from the heavier weighting of transportation costs and food costs under the CPI-W when food and gasoline prices spike, in the majority of years they fall behind due to the lower weighting of medical care..Two Ways and Means Subcommittees held hearings on reforming Medicare and Social Security this week. On Tuesday, the Health Subcommittee heard from a panel of experts on Medicare reform, and on Thursday, the Social Security Subcommittee met to discuss potential changes to the program..Here is why we say that..As with Social Security and Medicare long-term viability, reducing the high costs of drugs is also at the top on TSCL's agenda this year. These are complicated problems but Congress must find a way to deal with them and TSCL will be fighting for you as these debates continue..Under current Social Security law, that's all that's required to later claim benefits. To file for benefits, individuals don't need to be citizens, but must have a workauthorized Social Security number. Those receiving work authorization would become vested for benefits with as little as ten years of earnings. The oldest of those who are eligible for the deferred action could feasibly have worked illegally long enough to already be "vested" for Social Security — including disability. This would add to program solvency problems since the Congressional Budget Office and Social Security Trustees have estimated that the Social Security disability trust fund will be fully insolvent by 2016..Barbara has a number of ways she tries to cope. She qualifies for an age reduction waiver on real estate taxes, and energy assistance to help cover the cost of heating her home. To save on her phone bill, she asked her phone company for a discount and got it. She uses shopping points from Kroger where she buys groceries to save money on gasoline.