Cola

[frosty69]

According to social security disability list I am on, the raise for COLA for 2008 is only going to be between 1.2 and 1.4%, but nothing set in stone yet, so might be more or less, and that is what our VA COLA will be to, if that is true, then will be one of lowest in many years, sure glad our cost of living isn't going up very much, according to the government.

[john999]

We have to live close to the bone so the top 1% get to live like kings. We live in a culture of corruption where those who work and pay taxes are considered suckers. I understand even some liberal democrats voted against reimportation of drugs from Canada. Surely, they owe the drug companies more than they owe the citizens they are supposed to represent.

[john6012]

He who has the gold makes the rules. The people who make the laws pass bills hat are favorable to them (Congress). They are filthy rich and become wealthier as they "serve." Often it is at our expense, paid for by the lives of our young, healthy service members while they invest in companies that make millions if not billions off of the blood of our finest. And they are too busy fighting amongst themselves to really attack the problems this nation faces. If they can't come to an aggreement among themselves how can they relate to favorable relations with foreign countries? Shame on them!

[Pete53]

1% COLA is absolutely ridiculous. It will be of no help to people who have to make it on a fixed income and mark my words if you are getting Social Security the increase in Medicare will make your check go negative.

[Guest Dataman]

Pete;

Gee 1% or 1.2% will more than cover the costs in things that have gone up.

In my Dreams. Shame I don't live there!

I think we cannot get a raise in Medicare part B that will be larger than than raise. Ie we cannot go backwards. Hopefully it's true?

Elec here is going up 17% next year. Trash and Water, Food cost more.

We make less.

I cannot see the CPI being less than 3-4% myself. But I don't do the math.

Lets complain to our Reps

[jimmy]

The Bureau of Labor has a good site showing the information on the CPI. This is a good link to keep up on the CPI-W which dictates our COLA.

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost

Here is a link to the MAR 2007 report - it has both the CPI-U and CPI-W items It does use food and fuel costs in its formula but there probably needs to a better gauge to determine our COLA than detremining inflation against worker costs and not retiree cost. For instance the CPI-W doesn't account for the tremendous increases in the Part B payments. It seems like every year the Part B increase exceeds any increase in COLA. The 2007 increase was 5.6% and COLA was 3.3%, 2006 increas was 13.2% and COLA was 4.1%, 2005 increase was 17.4% and COLA was 2.7% .....

http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf

March 2007 was the first month that we went into a postive number for a COLA since the JUL/AUG/SEP average of 199.1 in 2006. Using the March number our COLA would only be .759%. The CPI-W seems to alway go up in the summer so we will have to wait and see what the final number is.

[Testvet]

you all need to wait until sept or Oct to start getting worried about next years COLA a lot can happen in the next 6 months....