Your guaranteed issue rights for Medigap. If you want to purchase a Medigap policy, you need to do so during your Initial Enrollment Period. If you miss your Initial Enrollment Period, Medigap supplemental insurers can impose month waiting periods for pre-existing conditions that can leave you footing the bills until your coverage finally kicks in. On the other hand all Medicare Advantage plans offer guarantee issue rights, without exclusions or higher costs for pre-existing conditions or age during Medicare's fall annual enrollment periods. .Another major concern for those at the hearings was that the IPAB might inadvertently ration care. The law explicitly prohibits this, but many fear that without clarifying the definition of "rationing," there will likely be many discrepancies in the future. Rep. Phil Gingrey (GA) pointed out that what one calls rationing, another might simply consider reducing costs. .The FDA is working with vaccine and drug manufacturers to develop new vaccines for and find more drugs to treat COVID-19 as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, some people and companies are trying to profit from this pandemic by selling unproven and illegally marketed products that make false claims, such as being effective against the coronavirus. .Medicare first began offering beneficiaries the chance to enroll in private Medicare HMOs' in the mid 1980's. That program was absorbed and expanded under the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, creating Medicare+Choice. To cut federal spending on Medicare, the Balanced Budget Act set payments to the private plans at 5% below the fee-for-service rates of traditional Medicare. But by 1999, Medicare+Choice plans were not renewing their contracts with Medicare and there was a widespread exodus, leaving more than 2 million seniors scrambling to find other coverage. .Few Employers Withholding Payroll Taxes .This week, members of The Senior Citizens League's (TSCL) legislative staff were in attendance at two committee hearings – one held by the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, and one held by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. In addition, TSCL saw support grow for a key piece of legislation. .TSCL is working for legislation that would provide an emergency COLA. The Seniors and Veterans Emergency (SAVE) Benefits Act (S. 2251, H.R. 4144) introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Representative Tammy Duckworth (IL-8), would provide Social Security beneficiaries with a one-time emergency COLA of 3.9 percent. For the average retiree, the emergency COLA would amount to around 0 dollars. To learn more, visit . .Now there is a lobbying effort to make sure enough money is provided for those programs because without sufficient funding states could choose not to take the money and leave their Medicaid programs running as is. .Because of the coronavirus, however, the BLS has been unable to gather much of the information from those two categories. Therefore, although they do not use the word, they are going to guess at those costs. It may be an educated guess, but it is still a guess, nonetheless.