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  • Category Tips For Seniors

    The report analyzed the prescribing patterns of the nation's one million doctors and found that 736 of them had questionable patterns. The drugs prescribed included highly addictive prescriptions for morphine, oxycodone, anabolic steroids, hydrocodone with codeine, and barbiturates. Doctors, and crooks who use stolen provider identification numbers are writing multiple prescriptions for the same patients that are filled by dozens of pharmacies. .This will give them an additional week to try and get something done. If they can't by then, they'll either pass another short-term CR giving them additional time to work until probably Christmas, or they'll give up and go home for Christmas and push everything off to the new Congress and new President in January. .Despite these known challenges, President Trump recently signed an Executive Order which allows the deferral of payroll taxes, including Medicare taxes, if the taxpayer is affected by a federally-declared emergency like the coronavirus. The Executive Order doesn't apply to all workers, only those earning up to 0,000 annually. The average worker will be able to put off paying just under 0 for the term of the deferral, September 1, 2020 – December 31, 2020, or about per week. The move is only temporary, and workers will be required to repay the taxes next year. … Continued

  • Category News Press Releases Page 11

    In a letter that was delivered along with the petitions, Art Cooper – Chairman of The Senior Citizens League's Board of Trustees – wrote: "This bill would better protect the purchasing power of benefits while improving the solvency of the trust funds for decades to come … If you are already a cosponsor of this critical bill, please accept my gratitude. If you are not, please consider the requests of these eight hundred petition signers and cosponsor it before the end of this year." .In the meantime, TSCL is advocating on Capitol Hill for legislation that would provide immediate assistance to those who fall into the coverage gap. Older Americans living on fixed incomes cannot wait until 2020 for coinsurance in the doughnut hole to drop to 25%. We enthusiastically support the Prescription Drug Affordability Act (S. 2023, H.R. 3513), a bill that would drop the coinsurance to 25% by 2017, three years earlier than current law would. In the months ahead, we will continue to work with its sponsors in the House and Senate to build support for it, and we hope to see it passed into law by the end of this year. ."Congressional Pay Grows 15 Times Faster Than Social Security Checks" … Continued

This week, President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address, and talks to repeal and replace the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for doctors who treat Medicare patients seemed to have stalled. .This week, The Senior Citizens League was pleased to see support grow for four key bills that would improve retirement security in America if adopted. .Conn received more than .5 million in attorney's fees from the Social Security Administration, making him the third highest paid disability lawyer in the country. Reviews of Dougherty's bank accounts found ,000 in unexplained deposits. Senator Tom Coburn (OK) told 60 Minutes, "If all these people are disabled…I want them all to get it and then we need to figure out how we're going to fund it. But my investigation tells me and my common sense tells me that we got a system that's being gamed pretty big now." .For information about town hall meetings near you in the days ahead, call the local offices of your elected officials. For contact information, click HERE. .TSCL agrees with Rep. Johnson, and we believe Congress must begin formulating a serious plan to fix the program's finances. Recently, we announced our support for two pieces of legislation that we believe are long overdue. One bill (S. 499 / H.R. 918) would prevent beneficiaries from collecting both unemployment benefits and disability insurance benefits at the same time. The second bill (S. 1198 / H.R. 1936) would ensure that evidence from convicted felons and other criminals is excluded when determining whether an individual is eligible for disability benefits. .The proposal is not new. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan supported a similar proposal in the late 1990s. In fact, it's one of a series of technical changes to the CPI recommended by the Boskin Commission in 1996 — which said that the CPI overstates inflation and that the COLA overpays seniors by about 1.1%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics busily instituted a number of those changes from 1995 through 2000 that, by my estimates, have already cut the rate of growth in the CPI and average Social Security benefits, compared to previous CPI measurement methodology by about 5 annually over the past ten years. If Congress were to adopt the chained CPI to calculate COLA starting with the COLA payable in 2012, that would additionally cut the growth in average benefits by about ,429 over the next ten years. .Do you have a plan to manage aging parents, siblings, or the needs of children or grandchildren? Do family commitments require your time, attention or other resources, including finances? If something were to happen to you, how would that impact other family members? If children or grandchildren come to you asking for loans or childcare, how does that impact your retirement finances and how will you manage that? .For more information, visit the website of the National Academy of Social Insurance at www.NASI.org and download a copy of "When Should I Take Social Security Benefits? ". Or watch a video "It Pays To Wait". .On Tuesday, The Senior Citizens League released new data that shows nearly 80 percent of older Americans believe Medicare should cover dental, vision, and hearing services. Under current law, the Medicare program is prohibited from covering these critical services, and many older Americans living on fixed incomes cannot afford to pay out-of-pocket for costly care and assistive technologies like eyeglasses or hearing aids.