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When Congress enacted automatic Social Security COLAs in 1972, there was only one CPI and it measured the inflation experienced by urban wage earners and clerical workers. The 1972 amendments used this CPI as the basis for determining your COLA today. But today there are other, more appropriate indexes for calculating the COLA. In 1978 the Bureau of Labor Statistics expanded the CPI known as the CPI-U to cover all urban residents, including most retirees, and in 1983 the BLS launched an experimental index, the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, which reflects the spending patterns of people age 62 and older..By Representative Josh Gottheimer.On NBC's Meet the Press program on Sunday Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director.According to a report released by the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday, a full repeal of the law without a replacement would result in a loss of insurance coverage for 18 million individuals, and premium increases of around 25 percent for those who purchased coverage through the individual market. In response to the new report, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said: "The numbers are even worse than experts could have imagined.".On Monday, a group of three Senators Amy Klobuchar, John McCain, and Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the White House urging the administration to utilize its executive power to reduce prescription drug costs..Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage hit a new milestone this year. The highly - loathed "doughnut hole" or "coverage gap" closed this year. But that doesn't mean prescriptions will be free. The co-insurance in the former Part D doughnut hole dropped to 25% of all drug costs. That's the good news. But the out of pocket spending that's required to qualify for catastrophic drug coverage took a big jump, from ,100 in 2019, to ,350 an increase of ,250. That's the biggest jump in the out-of-pocket threshold since the start of Part D in 2006..Finally, the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act gained one new cosponsor in Representative Jim Langevin, bringing the total up to thirty-two. If signed into law, H.R. 242 would reduce costs for older Americans by requiring the federal government to negotiate lower Part D prescription drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries..Under current law, the federal government matches state Medicaid spending for everyone whose income is low enough to qualify, which is tied to the federal poverty level of ,060 or ,240. Under current law, as Medicaid spending increases due to rising program costs there are no caps on what the federal government contributes. Under the House and Senate health care bills, the federal government would switch to reimbursing states using a capped amount, regardless of the actual growth in costs in a state. If costs grow faster states would have to make up the difference..By U.S. Senator Tim Kaine