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The Senior Citizens League believes that the on-going Medicare cuts have weakened our ability to respond to national emergencies like COVID-1It has exacerbated a national healthcare worker shortage - including doctors and nurses, as well as the capacity of the nation's hospitals to deal with the sudden large influx of patients generated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many hospitals, doctors' offices, and nursing homes have required additional federal and state assistance as well as donations from the public, to acquire personal protective equipment such as masks, gowns, and gloves..their coverage, losing all of the money they paid..The task for the Administration is to figure out how to ensure patients don't unknowingly sign away their new protections, monitor and punish providers who violate the ban, and establish a process for settling disputes, among other complicated considerations. The ban is due to take effect in January..CMS to Save 4.5 Billion Dollars over Ten Years.According to a news report we've seen, groups that support President Trump are urging him to take a "hard look at mandatory spending, the root cause of the United States' fiscal woes." And when they say "mandatory spending" they are talking about Social Security and Medicare..First, the bipartisan Consumer Price Index for the Elderly Act gained one new cosponsor in Representative Mark DeSaulnier, bringing the total up to fifty. If signed into law, the bill which was introduced by Representative John Garamendi last year would improve the adequacy of the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment by basing it on the spending patterns of older Americans..However, a rift has developed among Democrats in the House of Representatives. Those who want to empower the government to demand lower prices from drug makers are concerned that moderates in their party are now emboldened to blunt their ambitious drug-pricing agenda..Only last year the Comptroller General of the United States, David Walker, warned Congress about this very thing saying, "Doing nothing, means that we are going to head to a precipitous decline in benefits. Remember the Notch Baby problem? This would be a Notch Baby problem magnified multiple times and it should not be allowed to happen.".The problem of how our government calculates price inflation affects more than just Social Security benefits. The consumer price index is also used to adjust many federal programs and other aspects of our laws such as the federal poverty limits and the federal tax code. By growing more slowly, fewer people qualify for safety net programs, or the federal tax code exemptions become less generous over time, and taxpayers pay more in taxes.