The Honorable Ted Cruz
U.S. Senator, Texas
404 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Rand Paul
U.S. Senator, Kentucky
167 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Mike Lee
U.S. Senator, Utah
361A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senators Cruz, Paul, and Lee:
On behalf of the 1.8 million members of the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), I am writing in support of your bill, S. 1030, the Retirement Freedom Act. This timely piece of legislation restores the rights of seniors to make important decisions that will have lasting effects on their personal health care choices and retirement security.
Under current law, Medicare and Social Security benefits are unnecessarily linked. When individuals turn 65, they must enroll in Medicare Part A if they (1) wish to continue receiving their monthly Social Security benefits if they took early retirement, or (2) claim their Social Security benefit at the Normal Retirement Age (NRA). While Medicare is meant to give security and freedom to its beneficiaries, the linkage of Social Security benefits to Medicare benefits restricts seniors’ ability to opt out of Medicare Part A. The Retirement Freedom Act severs the link between Medicare and Social Security by allowing seniors to opt out of Medicare Part A without jeopardizing their eligibility for Social Security benefits.
S. 1030 also rectifies another issue with current law. Right now, if an individual chooses to withdraw from Part A in favor of a private insurance plan, they are required to pay back their previous expenses covered by Part A, as well as all Social Security benefits they have received. The looming threat of costly repayments is an unnecessary penalty that keeps seniors in a plan they may not want. The Retirement Freedom Act eliminates the financial burden of withdrawing from Medicare Part A and protects seniors’ access to their Social Security benefits.
As an organization committed to representing seniors, AMAC remains dedicated to ensuring senior citizens’ interests are protected. We commend you, Senators Cruz, Paul, and Lee, for this senior-oriented and commonsense legislation. AMAC is pleased to offer our organization’s full support for the Retirement Freedom Act.
Sincerely,
Dan Weber
President and Founder of AMAC
I would like to see us move to remove all taxes on common healthcare items: toothpaste, dental floss, aspirin, Tylenol, etc. Sales taxes on healthcare should be eliminated. The only exception would be cosmetic and optional items so…
1) Ban taxes on healthcare purchases.
2) Eliminate the minimum needed to write-off healthcare as an itemized deduction.
3) Add pre-tax private tax free healthcare accounts. All after tax contributions to these accounts should be tax deductible up until these account hit a balance that is estimated to be needed for quality healthcare including additional costs need for covering pre-existing conditions. We should not be taxing citizens for taking care of their health.
4) We should allow citizens to opt to move rom Medicare and the govt pgms and thus to leave them and put the same money in these acts. Furthermore, we should allow all they have invested in Medicare to be moved overtime to these accts.
5) Vets should be able to get the same healthcare as the average citizen plus have their VA benefits fund their healthcare acct.
The idea here is to move people away from govt and politically dependent and employer dependent healthcare to private tax free healthcare accounts that will free them from the middlemen and thus save costs and then to put those savings into the private healthcare act of each citizen without going through govt to prevent the cost of going through govt.
These type of pre-tax tax-free accounts for citizens should be used to eliminate govt involvement in education, and unemployment, and welfare… every govt program possible should be moved from the govt in all its levels to private accts and employer contributions should also be moved to contributions to these accounts.
We should also help non-profit based healthcare grow by allowing U.S. controlled and based only in the U.S. non-profit healthcare donations to get a 105% tax write-off for U.S. citizens until we reach the non-profit healthcare infrastructure level we want and again we want these non-profits to be regional minimally and ideally city and county based… as localized as possible. The more resilient system is the most distributed and localized with the most citizen involvement and management.
Liberty should be a bedrock goal of this effort as should localization and a distributed network that is able to supplement neighboring localized resources.
Vets need to be able to go to any provider and ideally they should take the money that is being poured into the VA system and put in in the vet’s private accts except for maintaining military hospitals regionally and of course in each state in case of war. They should be perhaps more mobile facilities that are easily moved by plane, truck, and train around the country and elsewhere as needed.
I think this is a great bill. May the Lord bless you and keep up the good work.
While I wholeheartedly agree with this legislation, I do have one question: What about those of us who paid a “medicare tax” while we were working?
My part A Medicare costs me nothing as a retiree. I paid for it when I was employed.
How will this bill benefit people in my category? Will we get a refund?
This is a Win-Win for America.
Win #1–having the choice of keeping private insurance or going with Medicare, while not losing Social Security payments.
Win #2–saving taxpayer dollars, if Medicare is not accessed.
First off, I’ve called Senators Cruz, Lee and Paul as well as my Senators Sullivan and Murkowski supporting S 1030.
One aspect, and I have discussed this with the Senator’s is that those vets and retired military are really harmed by Medicare requirements. Once a military person retires, we pay into Tricare until we turn 65, which then we change over to Tricare for Life (no premiums). However, if we have not signed up for Medicare, we cannot get Tricare for Life! The for those vets and retired military that use the VA for all medical needs, we still MUST enroll and pay into Medicare when I know many Vets that do not use Medicare at all but must pay the existing $134 a month!
We need to support S 1030, but we need to get the above military issues, with the fixes added to S 1030.
Mike Coons
President, Greater Alaska Chapter, AMAC
First off, I’ve called Senators Cruz, Lee and Paul as well as my Senators Sullivan and Murkowski supporting S 1030.
One aspect, and I have discussed this with the Senator’s is that those vets and retired military are really harmed by Medicare requirements. Once a military person retires, we pay into Tricare until we turn 65, which then we change over to Tricare for Life (no premiums). However, if we have not signed up for Medicare, we cannot get Tricare for Life! The for those vets and retired military that use the VA for all medical needs, we still MUST enroll and pay into Medicare when I know many Vets that do not use Medicare at all but must pay the existing $134 a month!
We need to support S 1030, but we need to get the above military issues, with the fixes added to S 1030.
Mike Coons
President, Greater Alaska Chapter, AMAC