This is total nonsense. I do appreciate the gas prices being down but if you are not filling up once a week, it does not change things that much for seniors and veterans. These people who calculate are suffering from HUA Disease. ( Head up Ass)
I can tell you straight up that many of we seniors and spouses of Disabled vets have to depend on a fixed income. We have blended families and most of us are taking care of the kids and grandkids who cannot find a decent job and trying to pay high cost of tuition and books and we are put on the back burner. We have our kids living in our homes and many of us do not get Food stamps. In the state of Florida there is no extended medicaid. Who in the hell do these people think pay for prescriptions when one of their adult kids get sick.
This is appalling and who bails out the sick, the frail and the old? We can't even get a 1.3 percent Cost of Living increase. From Cnn reporting on Breaking News:
Social Security recipients will not get a cost of living increase
Approximately 1/5 of the nation’s population will find itself without a cost of living adjustment (COLA) included in their Social Security benefits for 2016. The group, more than 70 million Americans, includes 4 million disabled vets, 2.5 million federal retirees and their survivors, and more than 8 million people who get Supplemental Security Income, the disability program for the poor, who depend on their monthly payments (reportedly averaging around $1,224) to just get by.Most if these people have their Medicare Part B premiums for outpatient care deducted directly from their Social Security payments, and the annual cost-of-living increase is usually enough to cover any rise in premiums. However, when that doesn't happen, a long-standing federal "hold harmless" law protects the majority of beneficiaries from having their Social Security payments reduced. Still, almost 30% of Medicare beneficiaries will find themselves stuck for a premium increase of at least $54 a month, which would have otherwise be spread out among all Social Security recipients, including nearly 3 million, 1.6 million whose premiums aren't deducted from their Social Security payments, and a little over 3.1 million people with higher incomes. On addition, all beneficiaries would see their Part B annual deductible for outpatient care jump by $76, to an estimated $223. States also would feel the sting since they are required to cover part of the Medicare premium for about 10 million low-income beneficiaries
But if prices don't increase, Social Security benefits stay flat. That's what happened in 2010 and 2011. And it is happening again in 2016.The problem for seniors is that the way the government measures inflation simply doesn't reflect how people on Social Security spend.
Seniors don't benefit as much from lower gas prices as the average American worker because most are no longer driving to and from work. Medical costs have also increased faster than overall inflation, and a greater percentage of seniors' spending is on health care. Bernie Sanders is preaching to help seniors and this one issue is enough to get my vote. I know the President does not control this but this candidate surely gets the pain from suffering at poverty levels. Florida is underwater, literally in almost every single way and money not being an exception. Crunching these inflation numbers was a slap in the face to the people who need it most.. VOTE DEMS ....and know your lives depend on it !!! This is not the time for apathy.