Get unbiased counseling. NEVER, EVER drop your Medicare supplemental or switch Medicare Advantage plans based solely on the sales pitch of an insurance agent! This is especially true if the agent is trying to pitch you from a table set up in a discount store, or pharmacy window. DO NOT do business at all with anyone who calls on the phone or knocks on your door, regardless of who they say they are. There have been very widespread reports of con artists who tell seniors they are calling from Medicare or Social Security. You have no safe way of confirming who they are. Don't respond. Hang up and keep your doors locked! .In a letter of support to Rep. Kevin Brady (TX-8) – the sponsor of H.R. 711 – TSCL's Chairman Ed Cates wrote: "According to a recent study completed by TSCL, Social Security beneficiaries have lost over 20 percent of their purchasing power since 2000. Those who are subject to the WEP have undoubtedly fallen even further behind. It is now more important than ever for Congress to address the inequities that have been created by the WEP, and TSCL believes the Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act is a fair and responsible solution." .If signed into law, the Social Security Protection and Truth in Budgeting Act would amend the Social Security Act to ensure that receipts and disbursements of the Social Security Trust Funds are not included in a unified federal budget. It would also mandate that Trust Fund monies cannot be diverted to create private accounts. .More recently they have justified high prices by comparing them with the costs they would prevent. Expensive hepatitis C drugs, they say, avoid the need for a million liver transplant. No matter that the comparison being made is to the highly inflated costs of treating disease in American hospitals. .If adopted, this bipartisan bill would repeal the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) – two Social Security provisions that cut the benefits of millions of teachers, police officers, and other state or local government employees. By repealing these two provisions, the Social Security Fairness Act would ensure that all public servants receive the Social Security benefits they have earned and deserve. .This week, President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address, and talks to repeal and replace the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for doctors who treat Medicare patients seemed to have stalled. .Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced earlier this year that he wants to overhaul entitlement spending. TSCL is concerned that, after the elections, Congress could address rising deficits by moving legislation that would cut Social Security benefits. .Comprehensive immigration reform has been topping the legislative agenda in Congress for months, but so far most policy wonks and lawmakers have kept quiet about the ways in which reform would affect Social Security. Millions would become eligible to collect Social Security benefits based on work done illegally, under invalid or fraudulent Social Security numbers. TSCL is concerned about the ethical implications of this, and we believe that it would put additional strains on the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. .The number of people receiving benefits.