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the premium may become unaffordable..Call your drug plan to ask about the coverage of the new generic and the expected co-pay. Be forewarned: according to Consumer Reports magazine, some Medicare drug plans charge lower co-payments for the branded version than for its generic counterpart. That has to do with agreements between insurers and pharmaceutical companies that make it seem like the name brand is the better deal..Calculating the COLA in this manner would remove more of the uncertainty in years of economic recession and high unemployment and it would reflect inflation two ways - the growth in average wages which determine the average benefit, as well as the growth in prices. The national average Social Security benefit tends to rise most years, because new people coming onto the rolls tend to have higher wages than people who retired ahead of them. Indexing using this method would still tend to ensure a small boost to benefits even in years when inflation is so low that no COLA is payable..Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, it was my understanding that the 3.8% tax on net investment income was intended to fund the Medicare Part A Trust Fund, in much the same way a portion of the taxes on Social Security benefits are earmarked for the Part A Trust Fund..Month after month, year after year, unbeknownst to most of the public, thousands of people with no Social Security number are receiving Social Security benefits. The beneficiaries don't qualify for benefits based on their own work record. Eighty-three percent of them don't even reside in this country. A few of those receiving benefits are even dead..Rather than cutting back on one or two drugs, there was a large group that stopped filling most if not all their prescriptions as copays went up..TSCL would like to thank the following for taking time out of their busy schedules to discuss issues of critical importance to seniors: Rep. Bill Posey, Rep. Joe Wilson, Rep. Mike Coffman, Sen. Marco Rubio, Cathy Hurwit ), Lauren Lattany to Rep. David Scott ), and J.R. Sanchez..Eating more fruits and vegetables can help you stay healthier longer, reducing the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. But good quality produce can be difficult to afford, especially for people who depend on Social Security for most of their income. How can you get more fresh fruits and vegetables living on a Social Security budget? Here are some tips to get you started:.In making the 1977 changes, Congress, wanting to avoid an abrupt change, allowed persons born from 1917 through 1921 to use a special transitional benefit formula or the new 1977 formula, whichever would yield the higher of the two benefits. The transition benefit formula never delivered the promised benefit protection, however, because it did not yield a higher benefit amount. Instead, the new benefit formula most often yielded the higher amount.