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Choose a benefit period. The average stay for people in assisted living is 28 months, so you may want to consider a longer benefit..While seniors with Medicare aren't required to have an Obamacare health plan, they have worries too. Obamacare cut Medicare by more than 0 billion over ten years, and that's starting to impact seniors age 65 and older. In particular, the law cut reimbursements to Medicare Advantage plans by 6 billion..Another initiative announced on Monday will improve the quality and safety requirements for nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities. The new rule proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will update the standards that have been in place for nearly twenty-five years. According to the administration, it will "improve quality of life, enhance person-centered care and services for residents in nursing homes, improve resident safety, and bring these regulatory requirements into closer alignment with current professional standards.".The members of Congress still cling to that particular tradition even though by the time they come back to town in September they have less than a month to complete their work to fund the federal government for the new fiscal year which begins October If they were able to get their work done on time like they used to the August recess would make more sense..Some home healthcare can be deductible. In order for home healthcare expenses to be deductible, those who require the care must be unable to perform two or more of six activities of daily living and have a plan of care from a physician that specifies help with these tasks.."Medicare is also in the cross - hairs for massive changes," Johnson says. The budget resolution stipulates major changes that would focus Medicare on a system of private insurers, and provide beneficiaries with premium subsidies to shop for their own health insurance. A Congressional Budget Office report has found that similar proposals in the past would shift a growing portion of costs to older Americans. In that 2013 report, the CBO estimated that Medicare beneficiaries' premiums would be about 30 percent higher by 2020 than under current law..Under growing pressure to reduce the federal deficit, the prospect of major Social Security and Medicare cuts is the greatest it's been in almost three decades. The recent debt limit deal calls for a bipartisan committee that has until Thanksgiving to come up with a plan to cut the deficit by .2 trillion. TSCL believes that the committee would very likely include a change to a more slowly growing consumer price index that would cut annual-cost-of-living adjustments. There are also proposals that would require seniors to pay a bigger portion of their Medicare costs..CMS plans to automatically enroll the seniors in participating states with an "opt-out" provision. But TSCL has concerns as to whether beneficiaries will be able to choose the best form of care and how they would be able to switch plans or return to traditional Medicare..When the Social Security Administration receives wage reports from employers with Social Security numbers and names that don't match those on file, the reports go into an Earnings Suspense File until they can be reconciled with the rightful owner. That can occur years later when an application for benefits is received. Over the past ten years for which data is available the Social Security Administration has received on average, more than 9.5 million suspicious wage reports annually representing more than billion per year in wages. It's wages, not the amount of taxes paid that are used to determine benefits.