Category: CTF

Source: The White House

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing new resources to support women’s economic security and convening stakeholders to discuss the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to ensure that women age with the financial security that they deserve.
 
Under the leadership of President Biden and Vice President Harris, working age women’s labor force participation is the highest on record, the gender pay gap has narrowed, and the Administration is ensuring that women have access to good jobs and safe workplaces free from discrimination.  Still, women—and women of color in particular—experience workplace inequities throughout their lives, including as a result of discrimination, pay disparities, occupational segregation, and unpaid caregiving responsibilities.  These inequities can add up to millions of dollars lost over the course of a lifetime and contribute to a retirement savings gap between men and women.  While women typically retire with less savings than men, they are also living longer—thereby, experiencing more financial strain as they age.  
 
The Council of Economic Advisers is releasing a new issue brief on the Economic Security of Older Women highlighting the economic challenges that compound over the course of a woman’s life and underscoring that women are more vulnerable to economic shocks.  The issue brief also highlights Biden-Harris Administration policies that have helped mitigate these challenges and ensure women’s economic security as they age.
 
Since Day One, President Biden and Vice President Harris have fought to improve women’s economic security and protect and strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—lifelines for millions of women.  From lowering prescription drug costs for millions of seniors through the historic Inflation Reduction Act to issuing new rules to ensure that the financial advice that Americans get for retirement is in their best interest, the Biden-Harris Administration is taking action to support women’s financial security.  The Biden-Harris Administration is also closing gaps in women’s health research, ensuring that women enter retirement more securely, supporting families’ access to care, and protecting women from financial fraud and scams. 
 
As part of the ongoing efforts to support women’s economic security, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing the following new actions:
 
Supporting Employment Training and Housing for Seniors. The Department of Labor (DOL)—through the Senior Community Service Employment Program—is awarding more than $200 million in new grants to support training and employment for older adults.  Through these grants, participants—the majority of whom are women—are connected to jobs, gaining critical workplace skills and a pathway to financial stability.  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is announcing nearly $3 million in funding for the Elder Justice Innovation Grants.  Because traditional emergency housing options often cannot meet the needs of older adults, older women experiencing abuse are often forced to return to unsafe environments; these funds will support emergency and transitional housing tailored to the needs of older women.
 
Providing New Resources to Help Support Women’s Retirement Security.  HHS is announcing a new guide to services and resources—including tools for retirement planning and financial literacy—to assist women in planning for a healthy financial future in older age.  DOL is publishing resources to assist women navigating challenging retirement scenarios, including a new effort to educate attorneys and advocates on qualified domestic relations orders, a critical step in dividing a couple’s retirement assets in the event of a divorce.  The Department of Treasury is publishing a new issue brief on the unique challenges that many women face in retirement, and how the Biden-Harris Administration’s implementation of the SECURE 2.0 Act—including the Saver’s Match, emergency savings provisions, and expanded coverage for part-time workers—will help mitigate the gender retirement savings gap.  And the Social Security Administration is releasing a new resource for women and their families about how they can better access Social Security benefits and services.  

Protecting Women’s Earnings and Savings.  The Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (CFPB) is announcing new efforts to help older women—who are more vulnerable to certain financial frauds and scams—protect their hard-earned savings.  Today, the CFPB spotlighted the legal challenges faced by surviving spouses—often women—who may be pursued for their spouse’s medical debt.  Some states have enacted laws making clear that surviving spouses are not responsible for their deceased partners’ debts, and others limit the circumstances in which a surviving spouse is responsible; however, the CFPB has found that debt collectors may try to capitalize on a surviving spouse’s vulnerabilities by attempting to collect their deceased spouse’s unpaid medical bills without real consideration of whether the surviving spouse actually owes the debt.  This follows the CFPB’s proposed rule earlier this year, announced by Vice President Harris, which proposed to remove medical bills from most credit reports, increase privacy protections, help to increase credit scores and loan approvals, and prevent debt collectors from using the credit reporting system to coerce people to pay.  The CFPB will also release a report on the barriers that older Americans face in banking that financial institutions must work to address, including loss of a spouse, cognitive challenges, and changes in health.  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is releasing a new resource highlighting enforcement activities and public education efforts to combat sex and age discrimination.
 
Today’s announcements build on the Biden-Harris Administration’s actions to help ensure women age with financial security, including—
 
Lowering Health Care Costs for Women
 
The President and Vice President believe that health care is a right, not a privilege, and have expanded health care to millions more Americans while lowering health care costs.  The Administration continues to build on, strengthen, and protect Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act and has signed historic new laws to lower prescription drug costs and health insurance premiums.  The President’s prescription drug law, the Inflation Reduction Act, is directly benefiting women with Medicare, including nearly 30 million women enrolled in Medicare Part D.  These actions are especially important for women, who typically face higher health care costs than men and who are more likely than men to take less medication than was prescribed because of cost—with even greater disparities for women of color.  To help address these challenges, the Biden-Harris Administration is:

• Lowering the Cost of Insulin.  The Administration is delivering on the President’s promise to lower health care costs by capping seniors’ insulin costs at $35 for a month’s supply.  As a result, all 3.4 million Medicare Part D enrollees who filled an insulin prescription in 2023 had their insulin costs capped at $35 per month, saving some seniors hundreds of dollars for a month’s supply and lowering costs for about 733,000 women enrolled in Part D and B.
• Capping Out-of-Pocket Prescription Drug Costs. Under the President’s leadership, HHS is implementing a $2,000 out-of-pocket cap for prescriptions drugs costs for Medicare Part D enrollees.  In 2025, when the cap goes into effect, nearly 19 million seniors and other beneficiaries are projected to save $400 per year on prescription drugs. 
• Lowering the Cost of Prescription Drugs. For the first-time ever, the Administration announced new, lower prices for the first ten drugs selected for Medicare drug price negotiations, including for drugs that women disproportionately use.  For example, one of the first 10 drugs is Enbrel—an arthritis treatment; women comprise 72 percent of the enrollees who use Enbrel; a woman with Medicare who takes Enbrel and pays $1,777 today for a 30-day supply would pay only $589 to fill her prescription when the negotiated prices take effect—a 67% decrease in out-of-pocket costs.
• Lowering the Cost of Health Insurance. Millions of women are saving an average of $800 on health insurance premiums thanks to the Administration’s expansion of the Premium Tax Credit.  This expansion has helped drive health insurance coverage to a record high, while the Affordable Care Act continues to ensure that insurance companies cannot charge women more just because of their gender.

Supporting Women’s Financial Security

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring that women are supported throughout their working lives—by ensuring access to high-quality jobs, robustly enforcing workplace antidiscrimination laws, and closing gender wage gaps—and as they enter retirement.  The Administration is working to ensure women’s financial security as they age by:

• Safeguarding Social Security Equity and Efficiency.  Social Security is the bedrock of financial security for American seniors and for millions of Americans with disabilities.  President Biden and Vice President Harris are committed to protecting and strengthening Social Security.  SSA also administers the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides monthly payments to people with disabilities and older adults who have little or no income and resources; older women are more likely than older men to rely on SSI, making up 64% of SSI recipients aged 65 or older.  To simplify and increase access for individuals, SSA announced the first phase of an online, streamlined SSI application; published three final rules simplifying how non-monetary support from friends and family is counted; and initiated efforts to expedite decisions for people with severe disabilities.  SSA has also deployed a targeted outreach strategy to ensure that beneficiaries are aware of the benefits SSA pays to widowed and divorced spouses and dependents of eligible workers—a population disproportionately comprised of older women.  To help ensure that all beneficiaries receive the benefits that they are entitled to, SSA is also translating more materials into more languages, improving access to interpretation services, and developed a Limited English Proficiency Toolkit.  The Biden-Harris Administration is fighting to ensure that SSA has the funding they need to continue administering these crucial programs.
• Protecting Women’s Retirement Savings.  Earlier this year, DOL issued a final rule to close loopholes and ensure that the financial advice that Americans get for retirement is in their best interest.  DOL’s rule will protect the millions of Americans, including millions of women, who are diligently saving for retirement when they rely on advice from trusted professionals on how to invest their savings.  The rule will require trusted investment advice providers to give prudent, loyal, and honest advice, and prevent them from providing recommendations that favor the investment advice providers’ interests—financial or otherwise—at retirement savers’ expense.  These new safeguards will save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per impacted middle-class saver.  The Administration is also implementing the SECURE 2.0 Act, which allows survivors of domestic abuse to elect to receive penalty-free distributions from an employer-sponsored retirement plan. 
• Providing Housing Security for Vulnerable Women. The Department of Housing and Urban Development continues to support housing for older Americans, including through the Home Equity Conversion Mortgages for Seniors program, which allows seniors to withdraw a portion of their home equity for additional income, and the 202 program, which offers direct loans and capital for the provision of secure and supportive housing facilities for older persons.  These programs—which predominantly support older women— allow senior homeowners to age in place and help expand the supply of affordable housing by providing low-income older Americans with options that allow them to live independently but in an environment that provides support for daily necessities. 

Supporting Families’ Access to Care

The Biden-Harris Administration—through implementation of the President’s Care Executive Order—is working to ensure that older women have the support they need as they age as well as to care for the ones they love.  Even as older adults require care, they are also often the ones who provide it.  One in four older women provide some form of unpaid caregiving, and, without training and support, their health, well-being, quality of life, and financial future can suffer.  The Administration is supporting families’ access to care by:

• Ensuring Safety and Quality Care in Long-Term Care Facilities. Adequate staffing is proven to be one of the measures most strongly associated with safety and good care outcomes.  To ensure safety and quality care, earlier this year, Vice President Harris announced that HHS finalized a rule to require all nursing homes that receive federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid to have 3.48 hours per resident per day of total staffing, including a defined number from both registered nurses and nurse aides.  This means a facility with 100 residents would need at least two or three registered nurses and at least ten or eleven nurse aides as well as two additional nurse staff (which could be registered nurses, licensed professional nurses, or nurse aides) per shift to meet the minimum staffing standards.  Many facilities would need to staff at a higher level based on their residents’ needs.  It will also require facilities to have a registered nurse onsite 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to provide skilled nursing care, which will further improve nursing home safety.   And HHS released a new “know-your-rights” resource for women to ensure that women can access safe and culturally competent health care free from discrimination and with protections to their privacy. 
• Supporting Family Caregivers. Through the American Rescue Plan, the Administration provided $145 million to help the National Family Caregiver Support Program deliver counseling, training, and short-term relief to family caregivers and other informal care providers.  HHS issued a report documenting actions taken by the Biden-Harris Administration to implement the first-ever National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers; these actions have created new initiatives that directly support family caregivers, strengthened existing programs, and improved coordination across the federal government to improve the lives of family caregivers.  HHS has also taken steps to support family caregivers’ access to training and beneficiary information during the hospital discharge planning process, published the Guiding and Improving Dementia Experience Model to support people living with dementia and their caregivers, and announced new funding opportunities to develop new approaches to support family caregivers.  HHS also published a guide to help older women find programs and services—such as respite care, support groups and individual counseling—to help them maintain their own health and well-being while being a caregiver for others.  And the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched a program to provide mental health counseling services to family caregivers caring for our nation’s heroes.  
• Investing in Care Infrastructure and Supporting Caregivers and Care Workers. The Administration is committed to raising the wages and quality of care worker jobs, and to investing in care infrastructure. In March 2024, SBA announced new funding opportunities to support small businesses in the child care sector as well as the creation of a child care business development guide, which will provide resources for child care businesses on starting and running a business throughout the business life cycle.  In addition, SBA is launching a lender campaign to highlight the resources SBA has available to support small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses, including child care businesses, and will discuss additional reforms to support the growth of child care capacity across the country.  The Administration is also taking steps to ensure Service members and military spouses—the vast majority of whom are women—have the support they need to care for themselves and their families while serving our country, including by strengthening hiring and retention of military spouses across the federal government, and expanding access to child care and other employment resources.  And the Department of Labor has published sample employment agreements so domestic home care, child care, and long-term care workers and their employers can help ensure all parties better understand their rights and responsibilities.

Protecting Women from Financial Fraud and Scams

The Biden-Harris Administration is working to protect the savings that older Americans have worked their entire lives to build. Each year, Americans over 60-years-old lose billions of dollars to scams.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other regulatory agencies are taking action to crack down on frauds and scams that too often target older Americans by—

• Protecting Older Women from Financial Fraud. FTC is pursuing actions against scammers who target or disproportionately impact older adults in their schemes, including those who conduct prize, sweepstakes, and lottery scams; tech support scams; and family and friend impersonation.  Last year, FTC’s past enforcement efforts resulted in relief of more than $285 million to consumers.
• Equipping Older Women with Tools and Resources to Protect Against Scams.  FTC chairs the Scams Against Older Adults Advisory Group focused on expanding consumer education and outreach efforts; improving industry training on scam prevention; identifying innovative or high-tech methods to detect and stop scams; it has produced a report on what research shows are effective tactics in scam-prevention messaging.  And the CFPB has released resources to assist older adults—who are disproportionately women—navigate later-in-life challenges, such as resources to navigate critical financial moments after losing a spouse; tools to avoid financial exploitation; and information to help safeguard finances. 

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