News

  • Legislative Update February 2015

    Under current law, the Medicare program excludes coverage of most routine and emergency dental care, leaving around 70 percent of seniors without comprehensive dental insurance coverage. Will you support the Medicare Dental Benefit Act (S. 22) to ensure that seniors have access to essential health care? .Eyeglasses, however, are not covered. If you are having difficulty affording a pair of glasses from brick and mortar stores, you may want to try shopping online. Zenni optical.com has eyeglasses starting as low as .95 for basic frames. Costco the wholesale club has high ratings for their optical section. According to Consumer Reports, the median price for a complete pair of eyeglasses, frames and lenses at Costco Optical is 4, the cost of membership not included. .Telephone scammers are bilking Medicare out of billions of dollars, and bombarding millions of older U.S. consumers with multiple daily automated phone calls for everything from "free" back braces to genetic tests. While Medicare scams have been with us for decades, what's new is the use of automated calling technology, and the massive international scale of the scams. … Continued

  • Legislative Update For Week Ending August 3 2012

    When you start retirement benefits before your full retirement age– which for you is 66 — you may work, but Social Security will withhold one dollar in benefits for every in earnings above the limit. The question for many people who go this route is when the withholding starts. .The Super Committee deadline looms and two important bills for seniors are introduced. .This week, TSCL enthusiastically announced its support for the Preventing and Reducing Improper Medicare and Medicaid Expenditures (PRIME) Act (S. 1123 and H.R. 2305). In the Senate, the bill was introduced by Sens. Tom Carper (DE) and Tom Coburn (OK), and in the House, it was introduced by Reps. Peter Roskam (IL-6) and John Carney (DE). It currently has bipartisan support, with fifteen cosponsors in the Senate and ten in the House. … Continued

Basing a decision on amenities and features. Just because the facility markets itself like a five - star hotel or is located near a great golf course does not equate to five - star standards of care. Look around and get a feel for the number of staff to residents. Try to meet a few residents. Are they happy? Does the staff look like they get satisfaction from their work? The office of your local Long Term Care Ombudsman can tell you about documented issues and problems that facilities have had in the past. .TSCL is strongly opposed to any cut in the payroll tax and we have lobbied aggressively against one. The 2020 reports from the Social Security and Medicare Trustees projected that the Social Security trust funds will become insolvent in only 15 years. At that time, all Social Security beneficiaries would face a 21% benefit cut in benefits that would eventually go to 27%. .Doing nothing and allowing the Social Security recipients to go with just a 1.3% COLA, would be highly detrimental to the Social Security income of all retirees, and would not extend program solvency. TSCL is working to make Members of Congress aware of the need for providing this boost to your Social Security benefits both to strengthen your retirement income and to protect you from huge spikes in the Medicare Part B premium. .What can you do? Sign one of TSCL's current petitions. . It depends on whether you can wait just a little bit longer to start benefits.. .TSCL continues to support re-importation of drugs more than general importation of drugs made in other countries. And, while we also support imported medicines made in other countries, we strongly insist that the drugs be certified to be sure they are pure and contain only the ingredients they are supposed to have. .But for more than two months, state inspectors failed to enter half the country's homes — a revelation that prompted CMS to crack down. .The 1977 legislation was intended to correct an earlier flaw in the Social Security benefit formula. That flaw raised the initial retirement benefits for future retirees too quickly. Government economists predicted at the time that, if not corrected, the initial monthly benefits of future retirees could be greater than their monthly earnings prior to retirement - far above the levels ever anticipated (2). The flawed benefit formula would bankrupt Social Security. .Economists are saying that cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) overpay seniors and that recipients don't need so much money to maintain their standard of living. Cuts to annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) are a key provision of the deficit reduction plans on Capitol Hill, and TSCL is fighting the plans that would cut the benefits of more than 60 million beneficiaries.