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As we look to the start of the 117th Congress, my commitment to seniors and workers is to fully support Social Security and Medicare and to oppose cuts to these vital programs. We have many challenges ahead of us. We must keep the economy moving and growing again as we fight coronavirus. Government spending must get under control. And we must ensure Social Security and Medicare works for today's seniors and future generations. There are ways to do both!.policies) say that if you have a net worth below 0,000 to 0,000 (not.According to the new Medicare Trustee Report released in April of this year, Medicare Part B premiums for 2020 are expected to rise .80 from 5.50 to 4.30 in 2020. That would swallow the entire COLA of Social Security recipients with benefits of about 5 or less. According to Social Security data, roughly 4 million low benefit Social Security recipients could be at risk of seeing no growth in their net Social Security benefit due to rising Part B premiums..Transportation or mileage to the doctor for yourself OR to transport others. Medical mileage was 0.19 per mile in 2016..A push in the House to give legal status to illegal immigrants is reviving some movement toward immigration legislation this year. But the effort is running into outspoken opposition, including that from TSCL's grass roots senior members and supporters. At issue is whether undocumented immigrants, who have used fraudulent Social Security numbers to get jobs, would be allowed to claim Social Security payments based on earnings under those numbers..In fact, unlike the additional Medicare tax on high earners, this 3.8% net investment tax was not even a specific provision of the Affordable Care Act. It was a provision of a separate bill, the Health Care Education and Reconciliation Act of 2010 which was passed about two days after the Affordable Care Act. By setting up the revenues so that they would flow to the General Fund, Congress by-passed earmarking those revenues for Medicare Part A or Part B Trust Fund. That means when the funds are used for other government spending, the Medicare Trust Funds are not earning any interest from the federal government for the use of those funds..This week, two congressional committees held hearings on issues affecting older Americans, and The Senior Citizens League saw support grow for four key bills in the House and Senate..The non - partisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that, if 500,000 of the roughly 6 million Americans with Alzheimer's are prescribed Aduhelm, total Medicare spending on this one drug, for one year, would be nearly billion. This would far exceed the spending on any other drug covered by Medicare Part B, or Part D, in 201Medicare spending for all Part B drugs was billion in 201What's more the estimated billion does not include the cost of any associated care. The drug can cause some people temporary brain swelling or small bleeding spots on the brain and requires pricey magnetic resonance imaging scans to monitor treatment.."Anyone would have to acknowledge that a lot of what has gone on with the pharmaceutical industry as it relates to their contacts with doctors is lobbying, pure and simple," McCaskill said in the hearing. "If we are going to limit the lunches that can be bought for members of Congress in the context of lobbying, shouldn't we have the same kind of disclosures with doctors? And if it is in fact about the patients, the industry should have no problem disclosing how much money they are spending on doctors in terms of recreational time. I'm talking about golf, I'm talking about trips, I'm talking about dinners, I'm talking about expensive wine. Why in the world would we allow that to go on without the public and the patients knowing that's going on?"