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The National Committee is dedicated to protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits for all communities and generations.

Schumer-Manchin Negotiations May Yield Some Wins for Seniors

The negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) over a new budget reconciliation deal have been great fodder for political journalists, but they are also incredibly important to American seniors.  Senators Schumer and Manchin are haggling over a pared-down version of the Build Back Better legislation, which the West Virginia Senator effectively killed earlier this year, designed to pass with only Democratic votes via the reconciliation process. The new package reportedly retains some crucial items for older Americans:  prescription drug pricing reform and Medicare solvency.
2022-07-13T15:52:53-04:00July 13th, 2022|Categories: Congress, Democrats, Medicare, Prescription Drug Prices, Senate, Senator Joe Manchin|

House Members Urge CMS to Expand Medicare Dental Coverage

More than 100 members of the U.S. House have sent a letter to the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in an effort to expand Medicare dental coverage. (Traditional Medicare only covers “medically necessary” dental care in a narrowly defined way that excludes not only routine care, but many illness-related treatments.)  The members implored CMS administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure to broaden the definition of “medically necessary” to cover many more types of dental care.
2022-07-06T16:01:52-04:00July 6th, 2022|Categories: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, Congress, Democrats, Medicare|

Republican Roundtable Revives Wrongheaded Ideas for Social Security

GOP members of the House Ways and Means Committee held an all-Republican roundtable on the future of the program on June 29.  That’s a little like holding an all-Red Sox roundtable on the future of the Yankees. Republicans have spent four decades devising ways to undermine Social Security – including their triad of terrible ideas: raising the retirement age, means-testing benefits, and privatizing the program
2022-07-05T16:10:01-04:00July 1st, 2022|Categories: Democrats, privatization, Rep. John Larson, Republicans, Social Security|

Don’t Trust Insurance Industry “News” about Medicare Advantage

Deb Gordon’s piece in Forbes entitled, 88% Of Medicare Advantage Enrollees Are Happy With Their Health Insurance, New Study Shows, is more like an industry press release than a bona fide news story. The writer herself is a representative of the insurance industry, hardly an objective author for a piece about the insurance industry.
2022-06-22T09:09:16-04:00June 21st, 2022|Categories: Equal Time, Medicare, Medicare Advantage|

Social Security Trust Fund Projected to Endure for an Additional Year, Trustees Say

Social Security’s trust fund received a one-year reprieve in the 2022 Social Security Trustees report, released late Thursday afternoon.  The Trustees project that the combined disability and retirement trust fund will become depleted in 2035 – one year later than predicted last time – if Congress doesn’t take preventative action. When the trust fund becomes insolvent, the Trustees say, Social Security will only be able to pay 80% of scheduled benefits.
2022-06-03T12:21:25-04:00June 3rd, 2022|Categories: COLAs, Congress, payroll taxes, President Biden, Rep. John Larson, Social Security, Social Security Trustees|

All House Dems Should Cosponsor Social Security 2100 Bill

If you are represented by a Democrat in the U.S. House, chances are that your member of Congress has already cosponsored a piece of landmark legislation to boost and strengthen Social Security: Rep. John Larson’s Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust. In fact, the bill currently has 202 Democratic cosponsors (and zero Republicans). But some Democrats have not signed on as cosponsors.
2022-06-03T10:49:41-04:00May 27th, 2022|Categories: Uncategorized|

SSA Woefully Underfunded, Struggling to Provide Customer Service, Witnesses Tell Congress

Witness after witness at Tuesday’s Congressional hearing on Social Security Administration (SSA) customer service testified that the agency is in dire need of additional resources in order to properly serve the public.  The hearing was held by the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, chaired by Rep. John Larson (D-CT), with testimony from a variety of witnesses from SSA and advocacy groups. 
2022-05-18T11:29:21-04:00May 18th, 2022|Categories: Congress, Democrats, Max Richtman, Rep. John Larson, Social Security, Social Security Administration (SSA)|

The Part D Prescription Drug Bait and Switch

Medicare Part D prescription drug beneficiaries can be in for a rude surprise after they sign up for coverage.   In an article this week in Kaiser Health News, Susan Jaffe writes that the price of a drug may jump within a month of a patient enrolling in the Part D drug plan
2022-05-06T10:51:04-04:00May 5th, 2022|Categories: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Congress, Democrats, Medicare, Medicare Drug Coverage and Costs, Prescription Drug Prices, President Biden|

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