When you get your new card, you may begin using it at once. But if you forget to bring it with you to your next doctor's visit your doctor's office should be able to use your old card until December 31, 2019. .The Senior Citizens League encourages its supporters to attend these events and to ask important questions of their elected officials, like the following three… ."We're not doing anything without a payroll tax cut," Trump said in a "virtual town hall" event hosted by Fox News at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington earlier this week. .Unlike many other organizations TSCL accepts no government funding -- this leaves us free to truly represent the interests of supporters like you. .COLAs are intended to protect the buying power of Social Security benefits against rising inflation. A new study recently released by TSCL found, however, that the CPI used to calculate COLAs today only does an anemic job of protecting benefits as it is. Since 2000, the COLA has increased just 31 percent, while typical seniors' expenses jumped 73 percent, more than twice as fast. .Could you tell me the status of the Social Security agreement with Mexico? There hasn't seemed to be much news about it recently. If we get a new president does that mean the agreement would be dead? .The Social Security COLA is calculated using the consumer price index. There are several of them, and the government uses the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Workers (CPI-W) to calculate the annual boost. That index, though, doesn't measure how people 62 and older spend their money. It measures how younger working adults do. Seniors, however, have different spending patterns, and have to spend a growing share of their budget on healthcare, which in most years outpaces overall inflation. .To learn more about how the SSA calculates the COLA you can find that info here. .Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLAs) have languished at exceptionally low levels in recent years. Administration officials and economists point to the sluggish economy and recent economic recession as the reason. But government tinkering with the consumer price index (CPI) is playing an enormous role in reducing the measured rate of inflation, in turn cutting the growth in Social Security benefits.