Posted on 10/18/2011 5:46:50 PM PDT by STARWISE
Social Security recipients will get a raise in January their first increase in benefits since 2009. It's expected to be about 3.5 percent.
Some 55 million beneficiaries will find out for sure Wednesday when a government inflation measure that determines the annual cost-of-living adjustment is released.
Congress adopted the measure in the 1970s, and since then it has resulted in annual benefit increases averaging 4.2 percent. But there was no COLA in 2010 or 2011 because inflation was too low.
That was small comfort to the millions of retirees and disabled people who have seen retirement accounts dwindle and home values drop during the period of economic weakness, said David Certner, legislative policy director for the AARP.
"People certainly feel like they are falling behind, and these are modest income folks to begin with, so every dollar counts," Certner said. "I think sometimes people forget what seniors' incomes are."
Some of the increase in January will be lost to higher Medicare premiums, which are deducted from Social Security payments.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Believe me that $115 is trivial compared to what that policy would cost from an insurance company. That’s why Medicare is going broke.
It would be my luck to repay my benefits, reset the amount and then die the next day...
Sorry, while it's convenient to believe that, it's simply not true.
The CPI calculations for Social Security benefits have been in place for years. See my explanation here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2794772/posts?page=9#9
Being an election year has nothing to do with it.
Trivial though it may be compared to a private insurance company's charges, it's also redundant in my case since I'm already covered by the VA.
some misc. info:
http://www.caring.com/questions/va-coverage-with-medicare
http://www.medicare.gov/Publications/Pubs/pdf/02179.pdf
page 26
I read your posts all the time, and appreciate the work you do in gathering important news of important issues. Like this item of Social Security inflation adjustment, I wouldn’t have seen it but for your post as I do not have a telivision set and am quite busy. You do this all the time and pick the really important issues to post. So that is why I said thank you.
I can see the Obama campaign commercials already.
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