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When there is no or a very low COLA, a special provision of law known as "hold harmless" protects beneficiaries when the dollar amount of their COLA is lower than the dollar amount of their Part B increase. The Part B premium is adjusted to prevent a reduction in Social Security benefits from one year to the next. "But when this provision occurs on a program-wide basis - as it did in 2016 and 2017, the entire increase in Medicare Part B for the year is shifted to the people who are not protected by hold harmless, Johnson notes. Instead of the Part B increase being spread over all Medicare beneficiaries, the total cost increase is borne by only 30 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who are not protected by the hold harmless provisions. They include:.In addition, one new cosponsor Senator Kamala Harris signed on to the Social Security Expansion Act from Senator Bernie Sanders. The cosponsor total is now at three in the Senate. If adopted, the bill would strengthen and expand the Social Security program by basing COLAs on the CPI-E, increasing monthly checks by per month, and improving the Special Minimum Benefit. It would cover the cost of these changes and strengthen the solvency of the trust fund by applying the payroll tax to income over 0,000 and applying a 6.2 percent tax on investment income for wealthy individuals..If you don't want diabetic testing supplies delivered to your home, you can go to any local store that is enrolled in Medicare and buy them. Ask if the local store accepts "assignment" or the Medicare approved amount as payment in full. If they do not, the store may charge more than the 20 percent coinsurance and any unmet deductible. Shop around. Call your local stores and find out what your copayment would be first if you decide to pick up supplies instead..One of the amendments would cut off funding for all of the immigration orders that President Obama has put forth since 2011, including the November order that lifts the threat of deportation for as many as 5 million illegal immigrants. Another amendment would stop the implementation of the Deferred Action for Children Arrivals Program, which currently allows illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children to obtain temporary work permits..Now a leading budget policy organization is pushing Congress to fully offset the cost of building the wall and other new spending and tax cuts with entitlement cuts - specifically, adopting the more slowly-growing Chained Consumer Price Index to calculate annual Cost of Living Adjustments. That's a change that would cut federal spending by about 0 billion, the group estimates..One of my bills would also increase insurance options for older Americans who are not yet age 6While the Affordable Care Act has greatly expanded insurance coverage, and limited insurers' ability to charge older Americans higher premiums, we can do a lot more to increase options and affordability. My Medicare-X Choice Act would expand on the Medicare framework to create a new public insurance plan for people of all ages..The new analysis by Johnson compared the growth of retiree benefits from 2009 through 2020 to learn how much more in income retirees would receive if COLAs had grown by a more typical rate of 3 percent. The analysis found that an "average" retiree benefit of ,075 per month in 2009 has grown to ,249 in 2020 but, if COLAs had averaged 3 percent, that benefit would be 7 per month higher today, and those individuals would have received ,227.40 more in Social Security income over the 2010 to 2020 period..The Biden administration is treating the first weeks of the program as a dry run to test if the federal pharmacy program will work before scaling it up, according to one source familiar with planning discussions..TSCL is supportive of the President's efforts, but we are taking a wait-and-see approach because, as so many things are in Washington, D.C., the devil is in the details.