Trustees Release Annual Financial Reports.In the coming days, TSCL will be keeping a very close eye on the movement of the omnibus spending bill. If lawmakers fail to reach an agreement before the December 11th deadline, the federal government will shut down once again, potentially impacting the timeliness of Social Security checks and reimbursements to doctors who treat Medicare patients..Dealerships and lenders that use these tactics often target older consumers, low-income people with credit problems, and people with low "financial I.Q.s" by taking advantage of the borrower's lack of understanding about loans, terms and finances in general. The lender makes money from charging excessively high interest rates and stacking terms in its favor, and from the profits when the vehicle is repossessed and resold, sometimes to multiple buyers..Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage hit a new milestone this year. The highly - loathed "doughnut hole" or "coverage gap" closed this year. But that doesn't mean prescriptions will be free. The co-insurance in the former Part D doughnut hole dropped to 25% of all drug costs. That's the good news. But the out of pocket spending that's required to qualify for catastrophic drug coverage took a big jump, from ,100 in 2019, to ,350 an increase of ,250. That's the biggest jump in the out-of-pocket threshold since the start of Part D in 2006..While the majority of workers pay Social Security on 100% of their earnings, people who earn the most, more than 8,500 a year, pay NOTHING on earnings over that amount..With Medicare Part B premiums growing several times faster than COLAs, premiums routinely offset a significant portion of the annual inflation boost. This, in turn, causes retired households to draw down savings more rapidly than planned, and many retired households to carry growing amounts of debt. Lower income households may go without adequate food, medically necessary health services, and to postpone filling prescriptions..In the new report from the CBO, estimates show that if the AHCA is adopted, 14 million individuals would likely lose their health insurance coverage next year. By 2026, that number would rise to 26 million. For low-income seniors between the ages of 50 and 64, the uninsured rate would more than double under the AHCA, from 12 percent to 30 percent. That's because premiums would jump by so much for older Americans by over 700 percent in many cases they would likely be priced out of the individual health insurance market..Last week, most seemed doubtful that Members of Congress would successfully reach an agreement before the looming deadline due to demands from some lawmakers to attach hundreds of controversial policy riders to the package. However, this week, many are reporting that appropriators have narrowed down the list of policy riders to a more manageable number, and leaders in Congress seem surprisingly optimistic about the prospects of the massive omnibus..Representative Elijah Cummings introduced H.R. 448 on January 10, 201It has since been referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and to the Committee on Ways and Means.
