Social Security Increase Forces Senior to Consider Giving Up Oxygen Machine

Seniors saw a significant boost in Social Security benefits last year, but for many, it's not what they bargained for—with one woman fearing she will no longer be able to afford her oxygen machine due to changes to her payments.

Indiana resident Carol, age 64, said Social Security used to be enough for her and her husband to pay for all their necessities. She received $917 monthly from Social Security disability benefits and didn't suffer under that amount.

But in January 2023, the Social Security Administration (SSA) increased payments by 8.7 percent to help offset inflation, causing seniors' benefits to rise by an average of $147. While this sounded good on paper, the extra $100 that Carol, who preferred to give only her first name, earned made her ineligible for Medicaid, and now she is struggling to make ends meet.

"One would assume that a cost-of-living adjustment [COLA] should not be counted as an increase in income for determining whether someone gets Medicaid since COLA is supposed to be money to cover the rising rate of inflation," Carol told Newsweek. "This is not the case."

Since losing her Medicaid, she has to pay a surcharge in copays. This year alone, Carol spent more than $600 to cover her medical expenses.

"The COLA I receive now is nothing near this amount," Carol said. "Now we cannot afford a lot of the necessities because of this."

The COLA and its implications on Carol's health insurance don't just affect her finances, she said. They could have serious impacts on her health, as she's had to cancel cataract surgery, hammer toe surgery, several appointments to a pain management specialist, a sorely needed visit to a gastroenterologist as well as two diabetes and migraine medications. And Carol feels certain she'll have to make more cuts down the road.

"I believe the next thing that will go will have to be my oxygen-generating machine," she said. "I wonder how many other people on Social Security this has happened to."

Carol also no longer qualifies for food stamps because her husband is also receiving Social Security benefits, and their now higher total income pushes them outside the threshold.

"Because inflation was so high and grocery prices are much higher now, we have had to cut the budget for food because it is one of the few things we can lower our spending on," Carol said.

While it's unclear how many Social Security recipients lost Medicaid and other benefits due to the higher COLA, it's not an uncommon experience.

The COLA can also push seniors into a higher tax bracket that can sometimes force them to pay taxes on their benefits even if they didn't before the COLA boost.

Today, around 25 million Americans aged over 60 live at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty line, according to the National Council on Aging.

"I thought the COLA was supposed to cover the impact of high inflation, not cause many of us to have to pay for or give up medical care that we so desperately need," Carol added.

Seniors and those with disabilities have been even more anxious about their monthly benefits as the Senior Citizens League recently predicted the 2025 COLA would be in stark contrast to the 2024 or 2023 increases, likely coming in at just 1.75 percent. That's a dramatic drop from the 3.2 and 8.7 percent boosts of the last two years.

And even when the SSA calculates a higher COLA for a year, many seniors already don't feel like it's enough to cover their living expenses amid inflation.

The COLA specifically looks at the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W), which often doesn't reflect reality for seniors, PRM financial advisor Roksolana Ponomarenko said.

"This discrepancy primarily arises because the CPI-W measures spending patterns of employed individuals, not retirees who tend to spend more on healthcare and housing, sectors where prices have been rising more rapidly than the overall inflation rate," Ponomarenko told Newsweek.

Due to the calculation method, many seniors still can't stretch their payments to cover upticks in healthcare and housing costs.

"It's a classic case of 'too little, too late,' as the COLA lags behind real-time increases in living expenses, leaving seniors to bridge the gap with their dwindling savings," Ponomarenko said.

Many economists have suggested that following the CPI-E (consumer price index for the elderly) might be a better COLA measure, although geographic variations in cost of living would also be a problem for seniors.

"It never really keeps up when seniors need it most, which is right now," Brandon Selfors, the CEO of life settlement and Medicare insurance company Bridge, told Newsweek. "My hunch is that senior poverty will continue to rise."