In April, TSCL's staff trekked up to Capitol Hill to hand-deliver hundreds of thousands of petitions to each Congressional office. The petitions were delivered along with a cover letter from Larry Hyland, Chairman of TSCL's Board of Trustees, who encouraged Members to support key bills. He wrote: "Your constituents listed in the following pages are active and informed, and these represent some of the issues that matter the most to them. Each of these bills would go a long way in protecting and defending the earned benefits of senior citizens." .Expanding Medicare coverage to include dental care. Millions of seniors are afflicted with age-related oral health issues. Yet under current law, the Medicare program is prohibited from covering most routine and emergency dental procedures, including fillings, root canals, extractions, and cleanings. The Medicare Dental Benefit Act (S. 22) would expand Medicare Part B coverage to include basic dental services and ensure that older Americans have access to the primary and preventive care that is needed to ensure good health in retirement. .Consumers in the U.S. are used to have many choices when it comes to the products we buy. Usually that is a good thing. But sometimes it creates a dilemma in deciding which is the right one to get. It turns out that the problem of choice is creating concerns about which of the vaccines against the coronavirus we should take. .By the time the Inspector General has performed its audit reports and given CMS its recommendations, CMS has limited, if any, time to collect before the statute of limitation expires. The OIG recommends that CMS should pursue legislation to extend the statute of limitations so that the recovery period exceeds the reopening period for Medicare payments. In addition, the OIG recommends that CMS develop a system to verify that the amount reported collected has actually been collected. TSCL heartily supports these commonsense recommendations. With Congress debating a major Medicare overhaul that would make seniors pay a higher portion of Medicare costs in the future, Congress should move quickly to close the statute of limitation loophole that's costing us millions in lost recoveries. .The CR that was adopted on Thursday will provide funding for two weeks, which lawmakers hope will give them enough time to iron out the details for a larger spending package. TSCL will be following the negotiations closely in the coming days and we will post updates here in the Legislative News section of our website. .War Savings to Fund "Doc Fix" Extension? .Prescription Drug Re-Importation – Making safe, secure re-importation a reality. .In exchange, annuities pay you a monthly income for the rest of your life, an income that can last 20 or 30 years. There are joint and survivor type annuities that continue the monthly income to your spouse after your death, and you can also buy annuities that have a 3 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment. .With the Medicare physician payment "doc fix" scheduled to cease at the end of February, lawmakers remain divided on where the funding will come from to extend the current level of payments to doctors. If the current "doc fix" expires, physicians' reimbursements will be reduced by a 27 percent rate.