Ncsl In Dc Standing Committees Natural Resources And Infrastructure Clean Power Plan Implementation WebinarAnother issue known as "balance billing" arises when patients are billed the difference between what a doctor charges for a service and what an insurer is willing to pay for it..Usually during economic downturns many older workers are forced into retirement when they lose jobs. While the pandemic may have caused more to retire earlier than planned, deaths removed hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries from Social Security rolls. In fact, life expectancy plunged by a full year in the first half of 2020, from 78.8 years to 77.8 years, the biggest drop since World War II..Federal Government Moves to Guarantee Access to Drugs … Continued
Issue Brief Under The Radar States Vary In Regulating And Reporting Covid 19 In Assisted Living FacilitiesA new analysis by The Senior Citizens League, one of the nation's largest nonpartisan seniors groups, indicates that changes the government has already made in the late 1990s to how it calculates the CPI have resulted in cutting the Social Security benefits of today's seniors by about 7 percent since 2000. Social Security recipients, who retired with average monthly benefits of about 6 in 2000, lost 7 this year alone, and about ,293 in COLA growth over the past twelve years. According to the analysis, the CPI changes that became effective by 2000 will cut more than ,000 of Social Security income from individuals who retired with average benefits over a 25-year retirement. "Chaining the COLA would further deepen the loss of benefits," says Larry Hyland, Chairman of TSC.Several lawmakers also asked Congressman Price about comments he recently made to reform the Medicare program before the end of the year. Congressman Price told the HELP Committee Members that there are no immediate plans to reform the program, and that he has not yet discussed the topic with the new administration. Congressman Price has authored several proposals in recent years that would transform the traditional Medicare program into a "premium support" model, where beneficiaries would be given vouchers to purchase private health insurance. TSCL opposes such plans since we believe they would result in higher out-of-pocket costs for seniors, and we will continue to advocate against them in the months ahead..The proposal to cut the growth of COLAs formed a major Social Security reform provision of President Obama's 2010 Fiscal Commission. It would reduce the growth rate in COLAs by switching to the more slowly-growing "chained" CPI. "The switch is insidious because it's enormously complicated to figure out, and it looks so small on paper - just 0.03 tenths of a percentage point," Hyland observes. "But the loss compounds over time. Within a decade it would have a significant financial punch that just keeps getting bigger," Hyland explains. The following chart provided by TSCL illustrates the impact of a chained CPI on a married couple's Social Security benefits, which start at a total of ,500 per month today, and how their benefits change over the first ten years. After ten years the chained CPI would reduce benefits by per month, and would cut benefits by ,488 over the ten-year period. … Continued