Medicare first started covering rehabilitation services in 197Just seven years later in 1979, Congress enacted a cap of 0 on outpatient therapy due to concerns that rehabilitation outpatient services would take over the Medicare budget. The cap – which was indexed to medical inflation – remained in place until the passage of the "Balanced Budget Act of 1997," when a ,500 cap was passed into law and set to take effect in 199However, President Clinton halted the implementation of the ,500 cap, leaving services open to reimbursements by Medicare. Since 1999, several bills introduced in Congress sought to either repeal or keep the spending cap on rehabilitation services, with the cap drawing bipartisan criticism as being unfair to Medicare beneficiaries. .Finally, two new cosponsors – Senator John Hoeven (ND) and Senator Angus King (ME) – signed on to the Concentrating on High-Value Alzheimer's Needs to Get to an End (CHANGE) Act (S. 2387). The cosponsor total is now up to twelve. If adopted, the bill would direct the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to create programs that would promote early identification, improve support for family caregivers, and provide continuous care for those battling many forms of dementia. .Social Security's "full" retirement age is the age at which you qualify for full, un-reduced benefits. It's based on your date of birth, so it varies for everyone. In 1983, Congress enacted changes that very gradually raised the full retirement age to age 67 by the year 202The full retirement age for people born between 1943 and 1954 is 6For those born in 1955 it is 66 and 2 months and it goes up 2 months per year for those born between 1956 and 195For people born in 1960 and thereafter, the full retirement age is 67. .Congress has spent much of its time over the past two years locked in a rigidly - partisan standoff over the federal budget deficit. But TSCL's new 2012 Senior Survey results suggest that lawmakers may not be paying close enough attention to senior voters — something that may come back to haunt them come November elections. They may be retired but, to seniors, jobs — not benefit cuts — are the key to cutting the federal deficit. .The second bill is H.R. 1215, which would establish an office within the Federal Trade Commission and an outside advisory group to prevent fraud targeting seniors and to direct the Commission to include additional information in an annual report to Congress on fraud targeting seniors. .The TSCL study looks at the costs of goods and services that are typically purchased by most Social Security recipients. This includes expenditures such as the Medicare Part B premium, which is not measured by the index currently used to calculate the COLA, yet is one of the fastest growing costs that retirees face. Of the 39 items analyzed, 27 exceeded the COLA while 14 were lower than the COLA. .While employment plunged at the height of the recession in 2009, new data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) suggests that millions of illegal immigrant workers hung onto their jobs. Employers sent in 7.7 million wage reports of workers whose names and Social Security numbers (SSN) don't match those on the SSA's files for 200The "mismatched" wage reports are frequently caused when the SSA receives copies of W2s for illegals who work under stolen, false or invalid SSNs. Although employment among illegal workers appears to have declined in 2009, the number of such "mismatched" wage reports that the SSA received from 2000 - 2009 averaged 9.5 million per year. .And, there's more! "The Best Ways to Save" has helped hundreds of thousands of seniors live better in retirement with valuable tips for getting the most out of Social Security and Medicare benefits and stretching retirement income. To request your free special issue send for postage and handling to: The Senior Citizens League, ATTN: BWTS, 1001 N. Fairfax St., 101, Alexandria, VA 2231Or visit TSCL on the web at . .But that's not the case for about 12 million employees with the highest salaries in the country. Unlike the Medicare payroll tax, which applies to all earnings, Social Security payroll taxes apply only to the first 8,400 in earnings. Neither the employees who earn more than 8,400, nor their employers, pay Social Security taxes on earnings in excess of that amount. "That's a problem for Social Security's financing," says Johnson.