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June 2006.chances are we may have a chronic health condition that requires regular.During the August break an old and ugly threat to Social Security and Medicare surfaced once again. The Congressional Budget Office released its forecast of future federal government deficits. It said that deficits are expected to climb to over trillion in fiscal year2020, which begins this October And they will keep going up in the years after that..Find out if your drug plan offers mail order: If your drug plan offers mail order you can often significantly cut your costs by using it. Generally, mail order requires a 90- day prescription, but often your cost is the same as what you would pay for a 60-day supply from a retail pharmacy..Roughly half of all older taxpaying households paid income taxes on a portion of their Social Security benefits this year, even though many of them had incomes as low as ,000 or ,000 for married couples filing jointly. Those modest incomes are just two times higher than the federal poverty level. Do you believe this tax on Social Security benefits is fair and, if not, what are you doing to fix it?.Last fall, Republican candidates made a lot of campaign promises: to create more jobs, to roll back federal regulations and to increase energy production. But you didn't see any bumper stickers or yard signs promising to gut Social Security. Yet, the first thing House Republicans did in the new session of Congress was to quietly change a rule that could force cuts in Social Security benefits for millions of Americans by the end of next year. By turning a simple procedural tool into a "doomsday" scenario, House Republicans want to manufacture a crisis in order to justify cuts and to move toward their goal of Social Security privatization, a long-time goal of Wall Street and right - wing think tanks..The Speaker slammed drug companies for the level of stock buybacks and dividends in recent years and argued that cuts to prices will not harm research and development spending given new findings on buybacks..The Health Subcommittee focused on three specific Medicare proposals that President Obama included in his fiscal 2014 budget: establishing a home health copay, increasing the annual Part B deductible, and increasing means-testing measures for Parts B and D. Most Subcommittee Members, along with the expert panel, expressed their disapproval of all three options, stating that they would simply shift costs to seniors instead of targeting the root of the problem. Instead, many suggested that they focus on reforming the delivery system to better reward quality medical care..If adopted, it would provide beneficiaries with a 2 percent benefit boost, base cost-of-living adjustments on the more accurate Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, create a new minimum benefit set at 125 percent of the poverty line, and eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits for millions of seniors. It would also extend the solvency of the program through the year 2100 without cutting benefits for current or future retirees. TSCL was pleased to see support grow for H.R. 1902 this week, and we hope to see it signed into law before the end of this year.