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Remember "Flo"? In 1999 she was the blond, perky, mature lady who came onto our TV screens telling us that she was here "to tell seniors about changes that affect our medicines." She would end by saying "I don't want big government in my medicine cabinet." Flo implied that, if Medicare provided a drug benefit for seniors, it would stifle research and development of new life-saving drugs coming to market and restrict access to drugs a patient was already taking..TSCL Releases Results of 2013 Senior Survey.Increasing funding for Continuing Disability Reviews, which are conducted periodically to ensure that disabled enrollees still qualify for benefits. CDRs return to the program for every invested..On Thursday, the Ways and Means Committee held a long overdue hearing on the Social Security 2100 Act. The bill was introduced by Congressman John Larson in January of this year. A companion bill was introduced in the Senator by Senator Richard Blumenthal. If adopted these bills would strengthen and reform Social Security by providing beneficiaries with a 2 percent benefit increase, would base the cost-of-living on the CPI-E, create a new minimum benefit set 125 percent of the poverty line and cut taxes for beneficiaries. Increase costs to the program would be paid for my applying the payroll tax to income over 400,000 and gradually increase the payroll tax rate to 7.4 percent..Even small tweaks in inflation can save the government hundreds of billions over time. Using the chained CPI would reduce the measured rate of inflation, and the amount of money you would receive in your COLA every year. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that moving to the chained CPI would cut government spending on Social Security by 2 billion over the first 10 years alone..The assertion that many lower - income beneficiaries would lose benefits due to higher COLAs simply isn't the case, but is rather another example of twisted partisan rhetoric. Voters would be far better served by lawmakers who are more focused on solving problems of the majority of people than spreading misinformation to protect the tax breaks of the nation's wealthiest workers..TSCL Announces Support for New Bill.TSCL recommends that anyone unsure of how the provision may affect you should talk with the human resources director of your former employer or union through which you receive benefits. To learn more about TSCL's legislative work read the weekly legislative updates; or to learn more about TSCL's key issues, please visit..We tell more about all of those below.