Pharmaceutical manufacturers hiked the list price of a record 832 drugs last month - nearly 200 more than January 2020 and the highest since at least 201All but 10 were branded drugs and 175 of those were specialty drugs, according to the report..The high cost of health care is one of the biggest threats to Medicare and older Americans' health in general. I stand ready to take action on drug price negotiation and Medicare-X and to debate whatever ideas Democrats, Republicans, and independents have to bring down the cost of health care today and protect Medicare's viability for generations to come..Nearly, 1.5 million people are affected by the WEP, which reduces the earned Social Security benefits of an individual who also receives a public pension from a job not covered by Social Security. For example, a teacher who spends his or her summers working a second job or a police officer who leaves the force after years of service but is not quite ready to retire can see their benefits reduced by as much as 40 percent. However, a similar worker with a private sector pension would not see this kind of reduction. We are punishing public sector employees such as our teachers, firefighters, and police officers..Among the documents released to TSCL was a statement by Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, that says, "Social Security actuaries have estimated that a Totalization Agreement with Mexico would have negligible long-range costs for the Social Security Trust FundsЕ Costs to the U.S. Social Security system are estimated to average about 0 million per year over the first five years.".Included is the issue of surprise billing, in which patients are charged out-of-network prices for services they thought were in-network. This issue has gained great urgency because so many people are ending up with bills for thousands of dollars even though they have health insurance which they thought would cover the expenses for which they are being billed..Of the respondents, 19% said they had used bleach on food, 18% said they had applied household cleaners to their skin, 10% said they had misted themselves with disinfectant sprays, 6% had inhaled vapors from the cleaners, and 4% had drunk or gargled diluted bleach solutions, soapy water, or other disinfectants..According to the Congressional Research Service, older noncitizens who were assigned a Social Security number before January 1, 2004, are not required to have ever received authorization to work in the United States at any point to qualify for Social Security benefits. In other words, those individuals may have worked illegally their entire career and may still file a claim for Social Security, and all their illegal earnings will be counted.."… Recently, our offices have received a significant increase in complaints from constituents who have gone weeks without receiving mail, similar to the surge of complaints we received last summer in the wake of USPS cuts and policy changes. These delays have had significant harmful impacts on the lives of our constituents. Because of these delays, our constituents have received bills after the dates on which payments were due or their payments were never received, and they have been forced to pay late fees..TSCL believes that legislative changes that would switch to the chained CPI and cut COLAs will be a key feature of deficit reduction talks and plans that become public after the November elections. You can help! Sign TSCL's Social Security Fairness Petition online or call to have a petition mailed to you.
