On Monday, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees reported on the financial standing of both programs. According to the six Trustees, Social Security and Medicare are worse off than they were just one year ago. Social Security's combined OASDI Trust Funds will reach exhaustion in 2033, three years earlier than last year's report projected. Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will face insolvency in 2024, the same date that was projected last year. However, the program's actual costs are expected to exceed estimates since the Trustees could not account for the costly "doc fix," which Congress will likely vote for at the end of this year..A report released by the House Oversight Committee last week said that from 2016 to 2020, the 14 top drug companies spent 7 billion on stock buybacks and dividends. That is some billion more than the amount spent on research and development, the report said..Start watching the mail for your new Medicare card. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services will start mailing the cards this month and plans to replace all existing Medicare cards over the next year - by April of 2019..Prevention of Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Eliminating inefficiencies within Social Security and Medicare..Highlights of this week in Congress include: fallout from the Super Committee's indecision; leadership changes at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services; and a new co-sponsor added to a key bill..Permanent Cuts to Payroll Tax would Devastate Social Security/Medicare.This year, for the first time in decades, "expanding" Social Security became the platform of a major political party - the Democrats - while both presidential candidates, Clinton and Trump, expressed opposition to any benefit cuts. And lending credibility to the claims, legislation is pending in both the Senate and the House that would provide a boost to Social Security benefits and use a "seniors" CPI, the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, to determine the annual cost-of-living adjustment. The legislation would finance doing this by lifting the payroll taxable maximum - which is currently capped in 2016 at the first 8,500 in earnings..TSCL agrees that solvency issues for both programs should be addressed as soon as possible so that any changes may be phased in gradually. However, we do not support increased cost-shifting or harsh benefit cuts for seniors. Both Subcommittees will likely hold more hearings on reforming the two programs in the coming months. TSCL will continue to monitor the ongoing debate.."In the U.S. arm of the clinical trial, J&J's vaccine was 72% effective, which, in the absence of the mRNA data, 'one would have said this was an absolutely spectacular result,' Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a separate White House briefing. What is more, the immunization was 85% effective at preventing severe disease and, in the trial, all hospitalizations and deaths occurred among people who got the placebo. None of the vaccinated people diagnosed with Covid-19 got sick enough to need hospital care.
