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This week, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees released their annual reports on the financial health of the programs. In addition, Senator David Vitter's Notch Fairness Act and Representative Buck McKeon's Social Security Fairness Act each gained one new cosponsor..The Senior Citizens League supports legislation called the Fair COLA for Seniors Act that would strengthen the annual COLA by tying it to a "seniors" index, the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers, which over time is expected to provide modestly higher benefits than the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which is used to calculate the COLA under current law. In addition, TSCL supports legislation that would provide a minimum COLA of no less than 3%. This would provide extra protection in years when inflation is below that amount..Two new cosponsors Senator Cory Booker and Senator Deb Fischer signed on to the bipartisan CREATES Act, bringing the total up to thirty in the Senate. If adopted, the bill would increase competition in the prescription drug industry by encouraging generic and biosimilar drug manufacturers to introduce their products to the market more quickly..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..Budget Compromise Released and Passed.TSCL polls indicate that a wide majority of older Americans are opposed to this policy. TSCL strongly supports legislation that would ban the use of earnings under invalid and fraudulent Social Security numbers from being used to determine benefits..Why is the action so controversial?.Keeping the U.S. drug supply chain secure, robust, and resilient is essential for the health and national security, and economic prosperity of the United States during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic and for the provision of day-to-day health care..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.