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? .The payraise goes into effect automatically unless denied by legislation, or adjusted by a provision of law that prevents Congress from receiving a percentage of pay increase that would be greater than any payraise received by the General Schedule to federal workers. When Congress passed legislation in December of 2010 that froze the pay of federal workers through December 31, 2012, they effectively froze their own pay as well. No similar provision of law, however, prevents Congress from receiving a bigger COLA than seniors. The adjustment for Congress is not determined like the COLA for seniors, which is based on changes in consumer prices. Instead the Congressional COLA is based on changes in private sector wages and salaries as measured by the Employment Cost Index. Members of Congress were originally scheduled to receive a pay adjustment in January 2010, of 2.1%, and in 2011 of 0.9% had legislation not prohibited it. .(Washington, DC) – Providing a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in 2016 should be the next top priority for Congress, according to a new poll of retirees released today by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL). When asked, "Which of the following should be the most important priority for Congress in the next few months?" the majority of poll respondents — 34 percent — said that Congress should "Provide a higher and more fair COLA." In October the Social Security Administration announced that inflation is so low there would be no COLA next year. "But Social Security beneficiaries today are struggling to keep up with rising costs, and next year's zero COLA will put them even further behind," says TSCL Chairman, Ed Cates. .Most of the negotiators seem relieved to have reached a compromise, but it's clear that neither party is thrilled with the concessions they had to make. In a telling statement, one of the twenty conferees, Rep. Henry Waxman (CA-30), said of the deal: "It's not so bad that I would vote against it." Another conferee, Rep. Kevin Brady (TX-8) stated however, "At the end of the day, we have prevented a disruption to our economy, avoided a tax increase on working families. and ensured our local doctors will not be punished merely for treating seniors in Medicare." .On Wednesday, the Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee met to discuss fraud, waste, and abuse within the Disability Insurance (DI) program. Subcommittee members heard from two expert witnesses – Sean Brune of the Social Security Administration (SSA) and Seto Bagdoyan of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) – on recent progress the administration has made in detecting and preventing fraud. .Here are some important tips to get you started: .The recommendation of MedPAC would combine the deductibles for Part A and Part B services. Currently the deductibles are charged separately and for good cause. About 80 percent of Medicare beneficiaries never pay a Part A deductible because they don't require hospitalization in most years. The Part A deductible for hospital inpatient services is ,156, a cost that is covered in full today by all Medigap supplements. Some Medigap supplements also cover all of the Part B deductible, which is 0 in 201Costs differ for seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage depending on the plan. Co-payments would also change and vary by the type of service and provider. .Your responses to our annual Senior Surveys are a key means to helping us convince Congress to move forward on key issues. Please take our 2021 Senior Survey. .TSCL's surveys have found that moving Medicare Part D to a pricing system that has similarities with Medicaid has strong support among older adults. Seventy percent of those who participated in our 2019 Senior Survey support allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for prescription drugs using a similar system to Medicaid's.