TSCL surveys confirm that costs for older Americans continued to climb despite no COLA this year. A recent TSCL survey found that 72 percent of respondents reported that their monthly household expenses rose by more than in 2015. .Get prescriptions from your veterinarian for medications: When your vet prescribes antibiotics or any other drug, don't automatically buy all the pills from the veterinary practice. Ask for a prescription. Often, you can get a cheaper price from your pharmacist instead, so check first. You can get a pet medication discount card from Costco, CVS, Rite-Aide, Walgreen's and Walmart. Compare prices with reputable online companies as well. .For more information about the Social Security Administration Fairness Act, visit the Bill Tracking section of our website. For updates on the administration's progress, follow The Senior Citizens League on Twitter. .For more information, or to see if your Members of Congress have scheduled town halls before the November elections, call their local offices..The way to learn about your drug plan choices is to use the Medicare Drug Plan Finder at www.medicare.gov. You will need a complete up-to-date list of your current prescriptions. Correct spelling is essential. Using a computer, either you or a Medicare benefits counselor will input your information and prescription information. The Drug Plan Finder will pull up a list of all the plans in your area and the estimated costs for each based on the prescription you currently use. .How is Social Security different from a Ponzi scheme? Interestingly, the Social Security website has a research note comparing the two. Charles Ponzi became infamous in 1920 when he used the money he received from later investors to pay extravagant rates of return to early investors to entice more people to invest in his phony investment scheme. This only works when there's an ever-increasing number of new investors coming into the scheme. Eventually the scheme runs out of new investors and collapses, taking everyone's money with it. .The petitions that poured into Congressional offices this spring urged each Representative and Senator to support key bills like the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers (CPI-E) Act, the Social Security Fairness Act, and the Notch Fairness Act, each of which would go a long way in protecting the earned benefits of seniors. The petitions also protested issues that our members feel strongly about, like amnesty for illegal immigrants and the pending Social Security Totalization Agreement with Mexico. .The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced a bold new model to save money and improve healthcare quality by changing the way the government pays doctors. The Administration is taking steps to ensure that, by 2018, up to half of all payments to doctors won't be for visits and procedures, but rather for providing "high quality" care. The plan is to pay doctors on how they perform. .Nevertheless, Congress is considering ways to "redesign" Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that changing the cost-sharing rules for Medicare and restricting Medigap coverage would save the federal government 4 billion over the next ten years.[1] Medicare supplements, better known as Medigap, cover Medicare's deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. The plans are popular with seniors because they provide financial certainty by reducing unexpected out-of-pocket expenses.