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AARP supports responsible solutions to reduce health care spending without shifting costs onto Medicare beneficiaries or reducing their access to care.

Congress has acted to prevent mandatory funding cuts to Medicare and other programs vital to millions of older Americans that were set to occur as a result of the new tax overhaul legislation.

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act, which the president signed today, is projected to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Under the 2010 “pay-as-you-go” law known as PAYGO, that increase to the deficit would have triggered automatic spending cuts to programs, including a $25 billion cut to Medicare in 2018 alone. But in an AARP-supported move, the House and Senate on Thursday waived the required cuts as part of a temporary spending bill to prevent a government shutdown. Thousands of AARP members contacted their legislators, urging them to act before the end of the year and prevent the Medicare cuts.

Preventing the cuts will help preserve seniors’ access to their doctors and hospital services. Medicare covered 56.8 million people last year, including 47.8 million age 65 and older.

Still, even with Congress’ action, Medicare and other programs will continue to face budgetary pressure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week that the Senate is unlikely to tackle Medicare and Social Security in 2018. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has also ruled out 2018 Medicare cuts. However, Ryan has made reducing the nation’s debt and reining in government spending a priority, and has openly discussed Medicare changes such as premium support.

Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid are among the government’s biggest programs. The government will spend about $700 billion on Medicare this year, a number the Congressional Budget Office projects will increase to nearly $1.4 trillion in 2027. AARP supports responsible solutions to reduce health care spending that do not shift costs onto Medicare beneficiaries or reduce their access to care.

resource: AARP

Also of Interest

AARP to Congress: Don’t Cut Medicare

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

The $1.5 trillion bill will have a negative impact on millions of older Americans

01/09/2018 Nativegrl77

President Signs Tax Overhaul Plan

by Gary Strauss, AARP, December 20, 2017

BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

The legislation preserves AARP-supported provisions such as the extra standard deduction for those age 65 and older and the medical expense deduction.

President Trump signed into law a massive tax overhaul bill on Friday, which deeply cuts tax rates for businesses but provides only temporary tax relief for most households and will likely raise health care costs for millions of older Americans. The legislation would also increase the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion, putting at risk critical programs vital to older Americans.

The tax measure was passed this month by the Republican-led Senate 51 to 48 and the House 224 to 201, with no Democratic support.

Earlier this week, Congress voted to waive a law that would have led to cuts to Medicare and other programs vital to older Americans as a result of the tax overhaul. Under a 2010 “pay-as-you-go” law, also known as PAYGO, the jump in the deficit would trigger automatic spending cuts in several programs, including Medicare. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), PAYGO requires total cuts of $136 billion in 2018, including $25 billion to Medicare alone.

“Such sweeping cuts would be detrimental to an already vulnerable population,” said AARP Chief Executive Officer Jo Ann Jenkins in a letter to Congress earlier this month. AARP urged Congress to waive required cuts to Medicare under PAYGO, as seniors could lose access to their doctors and local hospital services.

The tax overhaul legislation cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. It eliminates personal exemptions and sets seven tax brackets, topping out at 37 percent. It nearly doubles standard deductions to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples filing jointly. But the changes to individual tax rates would end after 2025, while the corporate tax break is permanent.

While many Americans would see lower taxes, most households would get little to no tax breaks by the time the individual rates expire. An analysis by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation released this week finds that the plan would lower taxes for most Americans in 2018, but noted that most of the gains would go to wealthy households. Moreover, once individual cuts expire, more than half of taxpayers would pay higher taxes by 2027.

Many taxpayers may have a bigger tax bill next year as new limits on deductions kick in. State and local taxes — including property taxes, state and local income taxes, and sales taxes — are capped at a total of $10,000. Deductions on home mortgage interest are limited to loans of $750,000. Interest on home equity loans would no longer be deductible.

The legislation preserves AARP-supported provisions such as the extra standard deduction for those age 65 and older and the medical expense deduction, which allows filers to deduct medical expenses exceeding 7.5 percent of their income in 2017 and 2018 (returning to its current 10 percent threshold in 2019).

Millions of older Americans would also face higher health care premium costs under the legislation. Beginning in 2019, it repeals the Affordable Care Act provision requiring most Americans to have health insurance. The CBO projects that would lead to 13 million more people without insurance by 2027. With fewer individuals in the health insurance pool, premiums in the individual marketplace would jump 10 percent in most years, according to the CBO. Those ages 50 to 64 would be especially hard hit, with premiums rising up to $1,500 in 2019 alone, according to an AARP Public Policy Institute analysis.

Another provision of the tax bill adopts a “chained” consumer price index (CPI) in the way the government gauges inflation for purposes of the tax code, which measures it at a slower rate than current methodology. While Social Security benefits aren’t addressed under the plan, the legislation could lead Congress to base future Social Security cost of living adjustments (COLAs) on the chained CPI, meaning annual increases would likely be smaller. (Such a change would require congressional legislation).

The legislation has already ignited a scramble among taxpayers, accountants, businesses and the Internal Revenue Service, all trying to determine how to deal with the most significant tax code changes in three decades before it takes effect in 2018.

The IRS is preparing guidance for workers and employers, but says taxpayers won’t see the impact on their paychecks until February.

Also of Interest

AARP to Congress: Don’t Cut Medicare

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Fight or flight ~ workingwa.org

01/09/2018 Nativegrl77

flock of starlings takes form of bird
Above: Starlings in flight take form of larger bird, like a real-life organize fish.

Three things to know this week:

Hourly workers in Washington State now get paid sick days, effective January 1st. Paid sick time was part of Initiative 1433, which also raised the statewide minimum wage to $11.50/hour this year (on the way to $13.50), with higher rates in Seattle, Tacoma, and SeaTac.

Alaska Airlines recently announced Trump tax bonuses of $1,000 per employee. The same company spent three years trying to block SeaTac’s $15 living wage law in court, as NPR noted that we noted in a tweet they described as sarcastic but we’d say was simply accurate.

Arena Sports in Mill Creek is adding a 3% “living wage surcharge” to soccer league registration costs, one of oddest of the misleading wage surcharges we’ve heard of. They apparently began the practice sometime between November 2017 and January 2018, a period during which the minimum wage effective in Mill Creek rose by 50 cents.

Two things to ask:

Do you remember? Washington’s attorney general is suing Motel 6 over their apparently nationwide practice of turning over guest lists to federal immigration authorities without their consent and without any cause anyone can fathom. When this was initially exposed in Arizona back in September, the company tried to blame it on local front-line staff… and BossFeed took a closer look at the absurd claim.

Can you imagine? A powerful German union is pushing for a 28-hour workweek in national negotiations this year, and threatening to back up the demand with large-scale strikes. Economic output per worker in Germany ranks among the highest in the world.

And one thing that’s worth a closer look:

As Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute notes in his analysis of the December jobs report, the nine-year-long economic expansion has pushed the African-American unemployment rate down to 6.8% — the lowest on record. The gap between the unemployment rate for white workers and for African-American workers is also the lowest on record, another piece of good news in the fight against inequality. But here’s the catch: African-American workers remain almost twice as likely as white workers to be left unemployed. When this is the best news on this front ever recorded, you know the issues are deep, systemic, and deserve far more attention from policymakers.