Seniors won’t see Social Security increase in 2016

That gauge came out Thursday. Health care costs rose 6.1 percent.

This change is based on something seemingly unrelated: Low gas prices. “There’s not a lot of inflation anywhere”. “Somebody who is making hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year pays the same amount of money into the Social Security trust fund as somebody who makes $118,500 a year”, he said, according to The Hill. Given that there won’t be a Social Security COLA, beneficiaries might need to consider ways to boost income: invest more aggressively in higher-yielding and perhaps more risky assets such as long-term bonds and high-dividend-paying stocks; return to work; or work more hours. Moreover, the same inadequate index is used for other programs for seniors and people with disabilities, including military retirement benefits, veterans’ compensation, civil service retirement benefits and the means-tested Supplemental Security Income program. You would also be hard pressed to make the case that Social Security benefits are too generous. While it has resulted in an average benefit increase of 4.1% over the past 40 years, benefits have gone up an average of just 2% over the past 10 years.

But in the past decade, the COLA has been that big only once.

“It’s very likely the COLA will be zero, given the way the numbers are now”, said Polina Vlasenko, senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.

One advocate for the elderly says they’re facing “another blow to their retirement income”. “It’s a huge amount over a lifetime”.

The majority of enrollees will not face any increase because there is a “hold-harmless” provision in federal law that protects most people from Part B increases if there is no corollary cost-of-living increase in Social Security. We are no longer in an era in which Medicare and Social Security enrollment are synchronized for all Americans, and it makes no sense to expose only a few beneficiaries to outsize premium hikes. The Social Safety Administration’s announcement Thurs.in that advantages will not improve in 2016 signifies in that retirees will not have additional revenue to pay for anticipated increases in Medicare Part B premiums and better deductibles. About 7.5 million of them are new to Medicare, not collecting Social Security checks or have higher incomes. Sen.

The president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), Richard G. Thissen, responded quickly with this comment: “Federal retirees received a “double whammy” of bad news today”.

Under the regular consumer price index, medical care is not given as much weight as many other types of expenses, such as college tuition and housing costs, which have less impact on most seniors’ cost of living.

The consumer price index, or cost of living, declined by a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in September, the government said Thursday. If prices rise, benefits rise. Like this year, plummeting gas prices accounted for the drop in total costs in those years.