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Because of your concerns in this regard, you will be pleased to learn of H.R. 1030, the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers Act of 201This legislation would direct the Department of Labor to prepare and publish a monthly CPI for Elderly Consumers that indicates changes over time in expenditures for consumption that is typical for individuals 62 years or older. The bill would then amend current law to provide for the use of such new CPI in the computation of COLA increases for Social Security and Medicare benefits..Members of Congress reached a last-minute deal to avert the Fiscal Cliff on Tuesday, temporarily preventing a combination of tax increases and automatic spending cuts from going into effect. In addition, Thursday, January 3rd marked the first day of the 113th Congress..In a letter to Marilyn Tavenner, the Acting Administrator of CMS, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission warned that some of the health plans don't have the experience to manage the full range of benefits required by dual eligibles or the capacity to serve large numbers that would be automatically transferred into the plans en masse at the beginning of the program..Three Bills Gain Support."The world's biggest drug makers and their trade groups have cut checks to 356 lawmakers ahead of this year's election - more than two-thirds of the sitting members of Congress, according to a new STAT analysis.."Low COLAs also take a huge toll on overall growth of Social Security income over a retirement," Cates says. "COLAs are like interest, and when COLAs are so low, benefits remain flat. Because benefits are lower now, the amount of increase, if more normal patterns of inflation resume later, will be based on lower benefit amounts, reining in future growth that retirees may have factored into their retirement plans," Cates explains..The Social Security Administration announced today that the 2020 COLA will be just 1.6 percent, continuing the worrisome trend in which COLAs have averaged just 1.4 percent from 2000 to 20"Adequate COLAs are critical to retirement security," says Mary Johnson, a Social Security policy analyst for The Senior Citizens League. "Social Security is one of the only types of retirement income that provides this essential protection against rising costs. "When a retiree's costs rise faster than their COLA, the buying power of Social Security benefits erodes, leaving people with a benefit that doesn't go as far as it did when they first retired," Johnson notes. According to research by Johnson, Social Security benefits have lost 33 percent of buying power since 2000..Are benefit cuts inevitable when Social Security's financing runs low in a few years? Your participation in this November's presidential election will play a critical role in how this question will be answered..And the order that directs clinics that qualify for steep pharmaceutical discounts under a government program for low-income patients to pass savings on insulin and EpiPens directly to those patients only applies to about 1,000 community health centers, not to hospitals that are frequently flagged as diverting the discounts away from patients toward other programs.