More than 45 million Social Security beneficiaries were receiving benefits by 2000. The beneficiaries who are still alive are the group that has absorbed the fullest extent of the COLA cuts to date, which compound like interest, growing deeper over time. Chaining the COLA would cut benefits for this group an additional 10% through 2025, the analysis found..Illegal immigrants get jobs using counterfeit, invalid, and stolen Social Security numbers that employers use to withhold payroll taxes and report earnings to the Social Security Administration. Immigration advocates argue that unauthorized workers have little chance of collecting benefits. But once illegal workers gain a valid Social Security that changes. Social Security Administration policy allows noncitizens who have evidence of earnings, even for jobs worked under invalid Social Security numbers, to claim and reinstate those earnings for use in determining entitlement once they obtain their own Social Security number. The earnings are then used to determine the initial retirement benefit amount..Does Medicare provide coverage for eye care services or eyeglasses?.Representative John Garamendi introduced H.R. 1553 on March 6, 201It has since been referred to the Committee on Ways and Means..Second, one new cosponsor Representative Sean Patrick Maloney signed on to the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act, bringing the total up to twenty. This bill, if adopted, would reduce prescription drug prices for older Americans by requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower covered Medicare Part D drug prices on behalf of beneficiaries..Last year TSCL joined the fight to end "surprise billing," a practice that generally refers to expensive, unexpected medical bills that patients receive from hospitals and doctors' offices even when they have health insurance that they expect will cover the majority of the costs of treatment..When comparing plans, beneficiaries are generally told to check premium costs, deductibles and other cost-sharing, whether the plan covers the drugs you actually take, provider networks, and added benefits, if any, not covered by Medicare. All of that is essential. But one key consideration that can be overlooked is how the plan uses prior authorization..The White House budget released earlier this year proposes to establish an out-of-pocket limit to the Part D benefit by phasing down beneficiary co-insurance in the catastrophic coverage phase of the benefit from 5 percent to no-cost sharing over four years, beginning in 201While this is better than nothing, the proposals make other changes shifting significant costs to Part D plans which would likely be passed on to consumers in higher premium costs and higher drug costs for the sickest people who hit the pre-catastrophic Part D gap. One analyst has estimated those costs would average ,000. In addition, there is no proposal at all that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices..Could the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment be more fairly adjusted to provide a fixed annual dollar amount? If the dollar amount of the increase were to be based on middle income, then low- and middle-income beneficiaries would be on more equal footing, and higher income beneficiaries would not be hurt any worse than we typically are anyway like this year with a 1.3% COLA!
