The goal is to prevent fraud and combat identity theft by removing the Social Security numbers. Fraud And Abuse Are Costing Medicare — (And You Too!) The federal government made more than billion in erroneous payments to Medicare Advantage health plans last year. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently testified that nearly 10% of payments to Medicare Advantage plans were improper. Those improper payments are driving up costs not only for Medicare, but also for every person in Medicare Part B. Government To Issue New Medicare Cards Watch Out For Scams! .Notch Babies receive lower benefits than other seniors near to them in age with similar earnings histories. For example, in 2012, the average benefit of 95-year old Notch Babies was ,31Yet the average benefit of 96-year old seniors was ,390, a monthly difference of Under normal circumstances the benefits of retirees who are younger are usually slightly higher, because wages used to determine benefits tend to increase over time. This is not the case with people born during the Notch period. ."Super Committee" Holds Second Hearing .As far as Medicare goes, the Part B funds will last for 30 years but the Part A funds, which pays inpatient hospital costs, will become insolvent in only 6 years. Both of those projections assume that nothing will be done before then to fix the programs, and TSCL has been working to get Congress to come up with a plan to stop those cuts from taking place. .According to The Hill, the legislation would, "… completely change the way the U.S. pays for drugs, saving the federal government more than 6 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). .To learn more about the WEP, download the Social Security Administration Publication No. 05-10045 here — https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf. ."To put it in perspective, for every 0 worth of groceries a retiree could afford in 2000, they can only buy worth today," Johnson notes. To help protect the buying power of benefits, The Senior Citizens League supports legislation that would provide a modest boost in benefits and base COLAs on the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) or guarantee a COLA no lower than 3 percent. In addition The League has recently launched a campaign for a ,400 stimulus check to help Americans struggling to cope with high inflation. To learn more about these initiatives, visit . .Third, one new cosponsor, Representative Jamie Raskin (MD-8), signed on to the bipartisan Fair COLA for Seniors Act (H.R. 1553), bringing the total up to twenty-seven. If adopted, this bill would better protect the purchasing power of Social Security benefits by adopting a more adequate Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Under current law, COLAs underestimate the inflation seniors experience because they are based on the way young, working Americans spend their money. As a result, Social Security benefits have lost 33 percent of their purchasing power since 2000 according to our research. .For tax year 2021, families claiming the Child Tax Credit will receive up to ,000 per qualifying child between the ages of 6 and 17 at the end of 202Under prior law, the amount of the credit was up to ,000 per qualifying child under the age of 17 at the end of the year.