If you find yourself in the situation where it's getting difficult to afford your prescriptions, Medicare has a program known as "Extra Help," that pays for some or even most of your out-of-pocket drug costs. You qualify if your monthly income is less than ,538 for individuals or ,078 for couples, and your assets are lower than the specified amount :.Medicare has recently made revisions to its payment rules, but those changes do not drop the three day of inpatient care for nursing home coverage, or require hospitals to tell patients when they are getting observation care. Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would count observation stays as part of the three hospital days required for nursing home coverage..During the nation's recovery from the 2007- 2009 Great Recession, and Troubled Asset Relief Program bailouts, Social Security and Medicare became frequent targets of deficit cut negotiations. Deficit plans included proposals to reduce annual cost-of-living adjustments by tying it to the more slowly growing chained consumer price index. The Budget Control Act of 2011 led to automatic 2% annual Medicare cuts on payments to providers. "That cut affected all Medicare providers, including hospitals, doctors, nursing staff," Johnson observes. "These are very same providers that are now so dangerously strained by the coronavirus pandemic.".The agreement would make patients responsible only for their in-network cost-sharing amounts for both emergency services, including air ambulances, and some non-emergency care, according to the outline..Trustees tend to report the financial condition of the combined Social Security Trust Funds, including the one that pays retirement benefits, as solvent until 203But there are actually two separate Trust Funds with separate accounting. One Trust Fund cannot borrow or receive reallocated payroll taxes from the other without legislative action from Congress - a short - term fix that Congress has relied on 11 times in the past..TSCL supports a special provision of the Senate bill introduced by Senators Orrin Hatch and Marco Rubio. The provision would ban earnings from jobs worked illegally from being used to determine entitlement to Social Security benefits and for calculating the amount of initial benefits legislation that TSCL and TSCL's grassroots members have long supported. But the Senate bill does not close a related loophole in current law that allows older immigrants who received "non-work" Social Security numbers issued prior to 2004 to claim Social Security benefits without having ever received work authorization..Under current law, the Medicare program excludes coverage of most routine and emergency dental care, including cleanings, fillings, root canals, and extractions. As a result, around 70 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are left without comprehensive dental insurance coverage. The Medicare Dental Benefit Act would correct this to ensure that seniors have access to essential health care. Will you cosponsor this important bill?.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.."The Outlook for Major Federal Trust Funds: 2020 to 2030," Congressional Budget Office, September 2020.
