If you're like most Medicare beneficiaries, you rarely make changes to your health or drug plans, but this is one of the biggest financial mistakes you can make in retirement. Insurers make numerous changes to drug and health plans that increase your out–of–pocket costs every year. Your health changes, and the plans that once were your best deal, may be full of high cost surprises now. Every year new plans, even new plans offered by your current insurer, compete for your business by offering similar or better coverage, for lower costs. Comparing your Medicare plan coverage every year and making changes when it's in your best interest, is one of the most important financial habits to get into..At the Social Security Subcommittee's hearing, the focus was also on three specific proposals: cutting the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment by adopting the "chained" Consumer Price Index, raising the eligibility age, and increasing the cap on income subject to the payroll tax. Support for each proposal was mixed, and while experts on the panel spoke with a sense of urgency, no real consensus was evident among Members of the Subcommittee..This week, two congressional committees held hearings on issues affecting older Americans, and The Senior Citizens League saw support grow for four key bills in the House and Senate..He said, "We have to work to do more to ensure that every older American has the resources and the support that they need to thrive. That challenge protecting our seniors, dealing with the rising costs of an aging generation, ensuring we have enough home care workers looking out for our family members, maximizing the contributions that older Americans can make to our country these challenges are just becoming more urgent.".TSCL's concern is not over taxes collected under valid Social Security numbers. The concern is over the use of earnings under invalid or fraudulent Social Security numbers to determine benefits. Earnings reported under invalid numbers most often occur when noncitizens work without legal authorization. Due to a loophole in current law, Social Security uses all earnings to determine benefits, even those from jobs worked under invalid and fraudulent Social Security numbers. Social Security thus pays benefits for the rest of the individual's life that may be based, at least in part, on work under fraudulent Social Security numbers. TSCL believes this policy rewards people for document fraud..The 2020 Medicare Trustees report recently estimated that the Hospital Insurance Trust fund will become depleted in six more years - 202"But the high level of hospitalizations due to the coronavirus for seriously ill Medicare patients may shorten the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund," Johnson says..It's important to note that Social Security would completely suspend payment of your benefits until the withholding of benefits due to excess earnings are accounted for. If you do start to work, you will need to contact the Social Security Administration as soon as possible and report what you expect to earn in 2021..Bipartisan legislation before the House and Senate would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset benefit reductions so that millions of retired teachers and police officers receive the Social Security benefits they have earned and deserve. Will you cosponsor the Social Security Fairness Act when you return to Washington?.The revenues raised from the taxation of Social Security benefits are used to pay Social Security and Medicare benefits. In 2017, the Social Security trust fund received .9 billion of its 5.6 billion in revenues from the taxation of benefits and the Medicare trust fund received .2 billion of its 9.4 billion in revenues.
