News

  • Congressional Corner Protecting Expanding Retirement Security Youve Earned

    A California physician ordered 115 Schedule II drugs (the class at highest risk for addiction) for just one beneficiary in 200Medicare paid 5,711. .For example, you may want to suggest that your sister put a simple plan into writing. The plan should outline how she wants to live. It's important for your sister to consider who is going to take care of her, if there's an emergency, or, if she needs someone to drive her to or from doctors' appointments. Do you have such a plan for your own long-term care? Perhaps this is something the two of you can do together. Your sister is not too young to start her plan. In fact, age 78 is an ideal age to put a plan in place, and, even to consider moving into a senior living community. .The CPI-E regularly puts the spending inflation for seniors at two-tenths of a percentage point higher than the rate at which the CPI-W increases. That may seem like an insignificant amount, but over a twenty-five-year retirement, COLAs do compound significantly. We estimate that a senior who filed for Social Security benefits around thirty years ago would have received nearly ,000 more in retirement if the CPI-E had been used to calculate COLAs. … Continued

  • Best Ways To Save Marchapril 2013

    Most people who spend the night in the hospital would say they have been an inpatient. But over the past six years, rapidly growing numbers of Medicare beneficiaries have learned that they were never admitted as an inpatient — even though they have stayed in a hospital bed, received treatment, diagnostic tests, and drugs. .Early this week, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced that it would immediately remove the text requirement from the online account login process. TSCL first voiced concerns about the new security policy two weeks ago, when we learned of the change. Senior policy analyst Jessie Gibbons told Karen Damato of Money: "We're concerned that the abrupt change will cause a lot of confusion and frustration among older Americans, many of whom don't have reliable access to text-enabled cell phones." .Finally, six new cosponsors signed on to the Social Security Fairness Act (S. 896 and H.R. 1795) this week, bringing the total up to ten in the Senate and eighty-three in the House. The cosponsors are: Sen. Brian Schatz (HI), and Reps. Adam Kinzinger (IL-16), John Duncan, Jr. (TN-2), Raul Ruiz (CA-36), Bill Foster (IL-11), and Randy Neugebauer (TX-19). If signed into law, the bill would repeal the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) – two provisions that unfairly reduce the earned Social Security benefits of millions of state and local government employees each year. … Continued

The new cards will have unique, randomly-assigned numbers called a Medicare Beneficiary. Benefit Bulletin: June 2016 Can You Identify Medicare Fraud In This Story? .No. In fact whether he's aware of it or not, your brother-in-law may be involved in a Medicare fraud. If he's receiving payment, free goods or services in exchange for his Medicare number, that's considered a crime than can result in jail time. It's becoming more common, especially in Medicare fraud hot spots like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and the south Florida area where you live. .However, with two weeks to go before the October deadline, negotiations have stalled. Leaders in the House have decided to tie the temporary funding extension to a measure that would defund the Affordable Care Act. Currently, a number of political strategies are being considered, but members of both political parties are unsatisfied with the options that leaders have put forth so far. .To see if your Members of Congress will be holding town hall meetings during the spring recess, click HERE or call their local offices. You can find contact information HERE. .In addition, since 1992 there has been a significant change to the government's bottom line. For the government fiscal year ending September 30, 2000, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported a surplus of 6 billion- billion of which comes from non Social Security revenues. The CBO estimates the 10-year non-Social Security surplus to be about .1 trillion. .We have been reporting recently that unless Congress passes new legislation soon there will be significant cuts in Medicare payments to health care providers, such as doctors and hospitals. If that happens it is quite possible those patients covered by Medicare would likely face negative consequences with regard to their health care. .Here are two actual cases from the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General, and estimates of what the cost would be over a 20-year period by Advisor editor, Mary Johnson. .The article continued, "The NBER study zeros in on how increases in prescription drug costs among Medicare recipients affect patient choices and comes to a stark finding: ‘Patient cost-sharing introduces large and deadly distortions into the cost-benefit calculus,' the report said." .Because just one Senator can stall legislation through what is known as a filibuster, it takes 60 votes to pass any bill unless it is through a process called "reconciliation," which then requires only a simple majority of 51.