Medicare Advantage plans merit a serious look, but you need to understand the pros and cons to determine the best fit for your budget without sacrificing insurance protection. The costly trade - offs to lower Medicare Advantage premiums often don't start showing up until you get sicker or need hospitalization. Some key considerations:.This week, one new cosponsor Rep. Adam Smith signed on to the Social Security 2100 Act, bringing the total up to 16The bill, which was introduced just over a month ago, has more support in Congress than any other comprehensive Social Security reform bill to date..The House will also pursue legislation to strengthen the 2010 health care law, Hoyer said. "We've already passed bills on protecting preexisting conditions, but that was a very high priority for us, and we may do something else," he said..If signed into law, the bill would take several steps to strengthen the Social Security program. It would make the cost-of-living adjustment more accurate by adopting an inflation index specifically for seniors, increase the minimum Social Security benefit to 125 percent of the poverty line, and enact an across-the-board benefit increase of approximately 2 percent, among other things. It would also responsibly strengthen the program's finances and ensure that the trust fund is fully solvent through the year 2100..Complicating matters, even though the Social Security retirement and survivors trust fund still holds IOUs that at least provide the promise to pay benefits, the Social Security disability program is in much more critical condition. The Social Security Trustees recently warned that the SSDI program may run out of IOU "assets" and become fully insolvent as early as 201TSCL believes that estimate is overly optimistic because the Trustees may be assuming there are more payroll taxes than the program is actually taking in. The Trustees assume that unemployment will be only 6.5% over the next few years - but today it's actually far higher - 9.6%. Advisor editor and Social Security policy analyst Mary Johnson estimates that the insolvency date for the Social Security Disability Insurance program could arrive as early as 2013..Joyce Heap was in end stage Alzheimer's disease, and living at a nursing home run by an Armenian couple, when her daughter Denise spotted suspicious charges on forms from her mother's Medicare drug plan. Denise Heap went online to find out what the drugs were, and she discovered her mother was supposedly receiving medications for conditions she didn't have, like breast cancer, asthma, and emphysema. Heap was convinced that someone used her mother's identity to bill Medicare for more than ,000 worth of medications in just three months..I was born during the Notch period. I would like to know how long Notch Babies have been underpaid. In addition could you tell me if the underpayment has been corrected and if we are receiving the right amount now? - M.R. Fort Cobb, OK.A new study recently found that Social Security benefits have lost 34 percent of their purchasing power since 2000 due to rising costs and inadequate COLAs. Do you support the bipartisan CPI-E Act, which would make the COLA more fair and adequate?.Date Posted: January 2011
