Thankfully, those covered under Medicare are not as susceptible to this, although it can still happen, even when it comes to such things as dental care. Hoyer said it's "possible" the House could act on surprise billing legislation before May although he didn't definitely commit to it..A new study recently found that Social Security benefits have lost 34 percent of their purchasing power since 2000 due to rising costs and inadequate COLAs. Do you support the bipartisan CPI-E Act, which would make the COLA more fair and adequate?.According to the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2020, 99% of Medicare Advantage and drug plans require prior authorization for at least some health services and prescription drugs. Traditional Medicare, on the other hand, does not require prior authorization for the majority of services, but may do so for some Part B drugs administered in doctors' offices, such as chemotherapy treatments. Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plans typically use prior authorization for higher cost services, such as inpatient hospital care, high tech diagnostic scans and tests, and more expensive prescription drugs..The Notch continues because Congress has yet to enact legislation to correct it. Notch Reform has been a highly contentious issue. In 1994 the director of the GAO testified to the Commission on the Social Security Notch saying that the Social Security Trust Fund would not have built up adequate surplus "had notch legislation been enacted at an earlier date." Over those same ten years, however, from 1995 through 2004, the federal government used more than .4 trillion in surplus Social Security revenues that could have been used to pay Notch reform benefits to fund other government spending..TSCL is pleased that after more than a decade, lawmakers have finally passed legislation to repeal and replace the SGR once and for all. The SGR has not worked as it was intended to since 2003, and seventeen times it has called for steep physician pay cuts, threatening access to quality medical care for seniors. We are hopeful that the new system will bring increased stability to the Medicare program..Now it seems that the cancelled policies and the number of people affected by them are beginning to have an effect on the Administration and Members of Congress concerned about the November elections. The Obama Administration recently announced that individual health policies, that were supposed to end in 2014 because they aren't compliant, may remain in force another two years, if states allows it..Surveys show a majority of Americans would like to see an increase in the Social Security payroll tax, but a new tax reform proposal would eliminate the 12.4 percent payroll tax altogether. This would end Social Security as we know it and transform it into a welfare program for older Americans. Do you support this drastic new proposal?.The blueprint also calls for billion in Social Security cuts, and it would fully repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with the House-passed American Health Care Act. That change would leave millions of older Americans not yet eligible for Medicare without health insurance coverage due to high costs. It would also impact around 11 million Medicare beneficiaries who are also enrolled in the Medicaid program many of whom are patients in costly nursing home facilities..Those members up for re-election would have used the recesses for campaigning, but campaigning has also been totally changed because of the pandemic. It is likely we will see even more campaign ads on TV this fall but who knows? There is no playbook for these circumstances, and everyone is still trying to figure it out.
