Older Americans might be thinking they dodged a bullet when the deficit cutting supercommittee process ground to a halt this week without an agreement. Many were watching the negotiations warily, worried that Social Security or Medicare benefits might be cut as part of a grand bargain on the deficit. But even though the supercommittee has [...] [...more]
Now that the Super Committee has ground to a halt, the threatened “sword of Damocles” is poised to slash $1.2 trillion in federal spending. As we move to this next phase of the budget wars, deficit hawks will rev up one of their most phony arguments — namely, that protecting entitlement programs rewards the old [...] [...more]
The Congressional Super Committee negotiations are coming down to the wire, and Republicans are demanding that Medicare privatization be included in any final budget deal. The news comes on the heels of GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent call for creation of a “premium support” option that would let seniors choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare [...] [...more]
Reading about Mitt Romney’s Medicare privatization proposal this morning, my first question was: How is this different than Medicare Advantage? Romney called for allowing Americans over 65 to choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare and private plans that would be shopped via a federally-sponsored Medicare exchange. Seniors who choose this option would receive a “generous defined [...] [...more]
Now that the official Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) and Medicare Part B premiums have been announced for 2012, we can tote up the numbers to see how seniors will fare. All in all, the news is pretty good – a 3.6 percent COLA coupled with a much smaller-than-expected increase in the premium for Part [...] [...more]
