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The Senior Citizens League is predicting another record-low Social Security cost-of-living adjustment in 2020 despite skyrocketing prescription drug prices and home heating costs. Will you cosponsor the Fair COLA for Seniors Act, which would make the COLA more adequate for Social Security beneficiaries?.Addressing the Part A shortfall will be particularly difficult and contentious for everyone. To bring greater solvency to the HI trust fund, lawmakers will be faced with the politically unpalatable choices of reducing Medicare spending, which could include requiring that Medicare recipients pay more for their coverage and increasing the tax revenues received by Medicare. Congress last addressed Medicare Part A finances in the 2010 Affordable Care Act which, among other things, required hospitals to become more efficient in their delivery of care, while requiring that higher income workers pay a higher Medicare payroll tax rate..Investigate national and community charitable programs and organizations. An excellent guide to Prescription Drug Assistance Programs is available from The American Cancer Society. Even if you don't have cancer, the information is pertinent to all drug assistance programs. For more information call or download the publication..Phasing in an increase in the payroll tax rate for workers and employers from 6.2% to 7.4% each over a period of twenty years. The gradual growth would mean an extra 50 cents in taxes per week each year for the average worker..Social Security provides an essential foundation to American's retirement plans, but it simply was never designed to be the sole source of retirement income. Social Security replaces about 40% percent of earnings of the typical retiree. TSCL believes that today's retirement crisis calls for more adequate, not reduced, benefits..Senate Passes Permanent SGR Repeal.Instead, my legislation promotes true market competition, which will both improve the quality of our prescription drugs and lower their price. It helps seniors by making sure generic drug makers can make high-quality, lower-priced prescription medications available sooner. In fact, according to a preliminary analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, this should save consumers and the federal government billions of dollars. That's right, billions with a B..New research links "silent strokes," or small spots of dead brain cells, found in about one out of four older adults, to memory loss in the elderly. The study is published in the January 3, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology..While the Social Security hold harmless provision provides important protection from Social Security reductions, more money is required to catch up to Medicare Part B levels in following years. If COLAs continue to remain low, premiums would adjusted again due to low COLAs. COLAs would have to be substantially higher in following years or the whole process would happen all over again.