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For the first time in over thirty years, there will not be a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security payments made to Americans receiving checks in 2010. The chance of this happening has been feared now for months by the nation’s elderly, many of whom are completely reliant on this fixed income to meet all their needs. With health care costs soaring, a disproportionate amount of seniors in the U.S. will likely become unable to meet all their needs without additional help. An ABC News report announced grimly today that there will be no increase this year, due to the fact that indices have shown consumer prices dropping over the past twelve months. The law says that a COLA must be approved if prices increase.

The devastating news has many advocates of the elderly, including the AARP, President Barack Obama, and many high-ranking officials within the Social Security Administration itself pressuring Congress to push forward a proposed stimulus payment for the elderly and other targeted groups of Americans who are likely to be put at a significant financial disadvantage due to the lack of a payment adjustment. The checks would be for two hundred fifty dollars under the plan at present. This morning, Obama commented that any help for seniors “will be especially important in the coming months,” with so many elderly having seen their homes drastically devalued and their retirement accounts slashed by the current economic crisis. It’s the natural order of things that the elderly consume more health care than their younger countrymen as a result of their advanced age and illness. For older Americans, the problem of out-of-control healthcare costs is pressing and very real. These people may have been counting on even a marginal bump in their Social Security checks every month to help them combat ever-growing out-of-pocket expenses, only to be crushed by news that such aid will not be forthcoming.

Last year, for example, Social Security benefits increased by a not insignificant five point eight percent. This was reflective of the great increase in food and energy expenses that had taken place in the latter months of 2007. But despite nationwide complaints of families struggling to get by paycheck-to-paycheck, consumer prices actually fell off a bit in the past year. As early as April, experts were already predicting that the government would use this trend as an excuse to not make a Social Security cost of living adjustment. On one hand, those who have been forecasting an imminent end to the entire Social Security program due to complete bankruptcy are pleased that the government is not handing out more funds than it is legally required to. On the other, the many elderly who are already having trouble putting food on the table and keeping the roof over their heads can’t derive much comfort from the prospect of perhaps keeping the system going for a few more years.

The problem is, of course, that Social Security was never intended to be the primary source of income for Americans in the latter years of their lives. And yet, with so many citizens facing trauma with their investments, any prospects these people might have had of supplementing government funds have been wiped out. The average American on Social Security makes a little over one thousand dollars a month, an amount grossly insufficient to deal with all of life’s necessities. Every little bit helps, in that sort of living situation. It’s not that those people affected by the lack of a cost of livening increase do not understand that the government can’t give out money wily-nily without justification, per se. It’s just that it seems like the indices that the U.S. government is using to determine whether a COLA is needed are not fairly representative of the specific needs and lifestyles of the elderly.

The primary index that determines Social Security payments is the CPI-W, a segment of the Consumer price Index. The CPI-W measures the spending patterns of working-class consumers, and has impacted the Social Security cost of living increase for over thirty years. The CPI-W is a reliable indicator for most working Americans, but it falters in accuracy when it comes to the elderly. The spending patterns of geriatric Americans are very different with regards to healthcare, for one thing. According to the CPI-W, the average American spent five percent of their annual earnings on out-of-pocket healthcare expenses last year. For older citizens, that percentage is greatly higher. The term “basket of goods” is not representative for the older demographic in the way that it is for working consumers. Experts have suggested that the most fair way to fix this disparity would be to assemble the proverbial “basket of goods” that is based more on the habits of the elderly, and to tailor entitlement payments to the applicable indicator per consumer.

A Congressional proposal called the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers Act of 2009 would monitor the spending patterns of Americans aged sixty-two and older to more accurately determine what kinds of benefits these citizens need in terms of Social Security and Medicare. Rep. Charles A. Gonzalez, D-Texas who presented the bill to Congress back in May stated that the terms of his proposal would “provide the basic benefits that our seniors can count on, regardless of the ups and downs of the economy,” providing “a rational approach to a very real problem.” Passing the bill seems of dubious likelihood when Congress is so focused on universal healthcare reform seemingly at the expense of everything else, and it’s hard to say whether the Act could be a quick enough fix for those who so badly need it anyway.

There is, in fact a consumer index that is based around the spending patterns of the elderly. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics even has it, say economists. But implementing a new method of applying this (or any other) index’s data to Social Security benefits and any needed increases would be a long and arduous process, say experts. There really is no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to this sort of thing, and a major administrative change of this sort does not by any means happen overnight. The existing elderly-spending index is only experimental, and it would conceivably be a long time before it was “ready for prime time,” so to speak. In the mean time, what will the struggling elderly of our nation do? It’s hard to say. Having a lack of benefits increase for the first time in thirty years was just not the type of hurdle that anyone was ready to jump right now.