NSCLC leaders such as Executive Director Kevin Prindiville often blog about the effects of senior poverty and the need for addressing this serious national problem. In this section, you will also find columns about our current and past policy priorities.
We frequently sign on to letters to members of Congress and submit comments on issues we care about which you can find in our We Agree section of this website.
- Talk Poverty Blog — Senior Poverty: Now You Know In a blog for Talk Poverty.org, Kevin Prindiville writes: “So now you know: senior poverty is a real and growing problem in America. If you want to live in a society in which people can age in dignity and no senior has to decide between food and the medicine they need, let’s start talking about ...
- Statement on Medicare Observation Status In a statement submitted to the Senate Special Committee on Aging dated August 8, 2014, the National Senior Citizens Center throws its support behind the Improving Access to Medicare Coverage Act of 2013 (H.R. 1179/S. 569). The bill would “protect consumers from harm caused by this often arbitrary and overused practice.” Observation status forces Medicare ...
- Action Needed Now to End Elder Abuse Among the Poor Most recently, the Labor/HHS Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee approved, for the first time, $10 million for the Elder Justice Initiative. Let’s not let federal support for elder abuse prevention wither in another appropriations cycle. This must be the year Congress seizes the opportunity to take real action to protect our nation’s elders. Read ...
- Income Inequality among America’s Seniors Means It’s Not Time to Cut the Safety Net In May, a USA Today story revealed that the U.S. has the fourth most uneven income distribution in the developed world. We rank just behind Chile, Mexico, and Turkey with one of the developed world’s largest income gaps. While income inequality in America is not news, few are paying attention to how income inequality impacts ...
- Policymakers Can Blunt the Sharp Impacts of Elder Poverty in America By Kevin Prindiville (column from May/June 2014 Aging Today). There are a number of ways the National Senior Citizens Law Center believes policymakers can act to address elderly poverty and blunt its negative impact… Proposals to weaken the programs have worked to alleviate the burden of poverty must be rejected; instead, we must update and ...
- Senior Poverty: Action Needed to Address a Growing Problem Written statement from NSCLC to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging on March 5, 2014 in which NSCLC recommends strengthening the safety net, improving SSI, increasing the availability of health care programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare Savings Programs and the Medicare Part D Low Income Subsidy, enhancing federal support for the long-term care ...
- Seniors Remain on Frontlines in War on Poverty By Kevin Prindiville The 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty brings a welcome and much needed debate about how best to eradicate poverty in the world’s wealthiest country. Unfortunately, few commentators are focusing on how poverty impacts the lives of the nation’s older adults – but they should. There are approximately 6.5 million people age 65 ...
- Statement on Long Term Services and Supports In a statement shared with the Senate Special Committee on Aging Dec. 19, 2013, NSCLC says that the first step in improving Long Term Services and Supports is addressing the imbalance that exists in financing of services. Medicaid, for example, continues to give preference to providing LTSS in nursing homes.
- Dual Eligible Demonstrations Policy Issue Brief 2013 – Focusing on the Individual The Affordable Care Act authorized the creation of demonstration programs that seek to integrate the financing of and delivery of care to dual eligibles. The Medicare Medicaid Coordination Office (MMCO) within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) used this authority to launch the Financial Alignment Demonstration (FAD). The goals of the FAD are ...
- Why SSI Needs an Appeal Process that Works September 2013 –An NSCLC issue brief, Why SSI Needs an Appeals Process that Works, provides an overview of how Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients are harmed when the Social Security Administration decides to stop or decrease their benefits, and they have a legitimate challenge to that decision but have no effective means of presenting their ...