Open enrollment for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans is now in progress, and before selecting or renewing your current plan, The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) encourages all members and supporters to explore their options diligently. According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 0 billion will be cut from the program by 2023 due to requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and many MA plans may be making modifications to benefit packages and provider networks that could affect enrollees significantly. .Because of the advanced ages of Notch Babies, the cost of correcting the Notch is falling every day. TSCL estimates (in 2006) that the cost of Notch Reform would be about billion, or slightly less than .75 billion per year over the next four years. The billion could be financed without taking additional money from the Social Security Trust Fund. This could be done through cutting wasteful pork barrel spending and reducing fraud and abuse in government programs. In fiscal year 2006 alone, lawmakers spent about billion in pork-barrel projects (8). That doesn't include what the government lost to improper payments, fraud, and abuse. The Government Accountability Office estimated that for fiscal year 2005 government agencies improperly spent more than billion (9). .When hold harmless is triggered program-wide as in 2016, however, there is no specific provision of law with which to finance the unpaid portion of Medicare Part B premium increases for the roughly 43 million who are protected by the provision. In the past, Congress has chosen to allow this cost burden to shift to the 30 percent of beneficiaries who are not held harmless. Because the cost is spread over far fewer people instead of all beneficiaries, they pay a far larger share of the costs, thus the Part B premium spikes. .TSCL is hopeful that lawmakers will successfully repeal and replace the SGR by the end of this year since doing so would bring increased stability to the Medicare program for both doctors and patients. However, we are opposed to offsets that would reduce Medicare benefits or require seniors to pay more for their health care, and we firmly believe that beneficiaries should not be penalized for the poor policy-making decisions that were made by Congress more than a decade ago. .This week, a federal court rejected the Obama administration's immigration appeal, and The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) saw two key bills gain new cosponsors. .(Washington, DC) – Low inflation is striking another blow to the long - term Social Security income of millions of older and disabled Americans, according to a new analysis by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL). "For the third time in only 7 years, older Americans will not see any Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) increase in their Social Security benefits," says TSCL Chairman, Ed Cates. "For tens of millions of people this has a devastating impact on the long-term adequacy of their benefits," he says. The Social Security Administration recently announced that more than 59 million beneficiaries would not receive an annual COLA next year, because inflation was lower this year than it was a year ago. .Initial Coverage Period: During this stage of coverage you pay a co-pay or co-insurance of 25% of the cost of covered drugs, and the plan pays 75%, up to a total of ,005 (beneficiary) and ,015 (plan). This includes any applicable deductible. Your plan's full retail drug cost, not your co-pay, is what counts toward entering the coverage gap. Your co-pays or True Out-of-Pocket costs (TrOOP) count toward exiting the coverage gap and qualifying for catastrophic coverage. .By Jessie Gibbons, Legislative Analyst .Johnson conducts research on the growth of the prices of goods and services that form a major part of a retirees' household budgets. According to Johnson, Medicare beneficiaries' out-of-pocket spending for prescription drugs was a total cost of ,097 in 2020 (including what beneficiaries and their drug plans pay). "Although drug plans vary, under the standard Part D benefit, the beneficiary is responsible for about 25% of that amount, and drug plans cover the remaining 75% up to an initial coverage limit which is ,130 in 2021," Johnson says.