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Hospitals, which are often the biggest employers in their localities, or even their states, have furloughed workers, and the industry lost an estimated billion a month in foregone surgeries and procedures during the worst part of the pandemic. Hospitals rely on elective surgeries for a major portion of their revenue, because Medicare and private insurers tend to pay more for those procedures than other types of hospital care. Hospitals say they also have lost money in treating COVID-19, because of the amount of intensive care that patients need..Two of the most popular Medigap plans, "F" and "C," will no longer be offered for sale in 2020. "While individuals enrolled in these plans may keep their plans, we are concerned that premiums for these plans could rise significantly without younger and healthier new enrollees to spread the costs in those plans," Johnson says.."Federal Cost of Living Adjustment Will Affect SNAP And Other Benefits Received Through DCFS, December 21, 2020..Following the reception, the Board of Trustees and TSCL's legislative team spent the afternoon meeting with six Members of Congress and their top aides. Support was expressed for a number of key bills, including the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers Act, the Notch Fairness Act, and the Social Security Fairness Act, among others..When Congress enacted automatic Social Security COLAs in 1972, there was only one CPI and it measured the inflation experienced by urban wage earners and clerical workers. The 1972 amendments used this CPI as the basis for determining your COLA today. But today there are other, more appropriate indexes for calculating the COLA. In 1978 the Bureau of Labor Statistics expanded the CPI known as the CPI-U to cover all urban residents, including most retirees, and in 1983 the BLS launched an experimental index, the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, which reflects the spending patterns of people age 62 and older..On Tuesday, the Social Security Administration announced that beneficiaries will receive a 0.3 percent cost-of-living adjustment in January the lowest Social Security COLA ever paid. It will increase the average monthly benefit by just around five dollars, and it is likely to be offset completely by increased Medicare Part B premiums..Social Security remains strong and solvent, but only for the next 17 years. After that, it faces a shortfall, only able to pay 75 percent of its promised benefits. Rather than breaking our promise to our seniors, and forcing retirees to shoulder benefit cuts that some have proposed across the board cuts, inadequate cost of living adjustments, and privatization Congress should instead work together to keep America's word and strengthen Social Security..There are several types of Medicare Advantage plans, and not all are available in all areas. Many are health maintenance organizations, but there are also preferred provider organizations and special needs plans, among others. Under traditional Medicare with a Medigap plan, you may go to any doctor who accepts Medicare. But in a Medicare Advantage HMO plan you need to use network healthcare providers in order to get coverage. If you are treated by non-network providers, you would be responsible for 100% of the out-of-pocket costs, and Medicare would not cover the cost of the claim. If the plan is a PPO, however, you would have greater flexibility to go out of network, but you would pay higher co-pays or co-insurance. Before selecting any Medicare Advantage plan, check the lists of network doctors, hospitals and other providers! It is not unheard of for Medicare Advantage plans to market to people who live a good distance from the nearest in network health care provider..The Senior Citizens League believes that the on-going Medicare cuts have weakened our ability to respond to national emergencies like COVID-1It has exacerbated a national healthcare worker shortage - including doctors and nurses, as well as the capacity of the nation's hospitals to deal with the sudden large influx of patients generated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many hospitals, doctors' offices, and nursing homes have required additional federal and state assistance as well as donations from the public, to acquire personal protective equipment such as masks, gowns, and gloves.