Excerpt from: New Jersey Estate Planning and Elder Law Blog (click for full article)
How will programs that seniors rely on be affected? The good news is that big chunks of the budget are exempt from the sequester’s cuts, including Social Security, Medicaid, and veterans’ programs. But while there will be no change in benefits for these programs, the federal workforce that administers them will be slashed, leading to delays and frustration.
In the case of Social Security, for example, visitors to field offices or callers to the program’s 800-number will have longer waits, and some offices may close altogether. Checks for first-time Social Security beneficiaries will take longer to arrive and the backlog of Social Security disability claims will start ballooning again.
Medicare benefits will not change either, but there could be more crowded waiting rooms and fewer practitioners participating in the program because payments to Medicare providers will be cut by 2 percent across-the-board. Doctors and hospitals say the Medicare reductions will cost their industries more than 200,000 jobs this year alone. The 2 percent cut for doctors follows a series of previous reductions, which may translate into more doctors refusing to take Medicare patients.
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