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In the meantime, leaders in Congress are working on a plan to fund the federal government past January 19th. In a joint statement released on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said: "It is important that we achieve a two-year agreement that funds our troops and provides for our national security and other critical functions of the federal government.".Finally, the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act gained one new cosponsor in Representative Jim Langevin, bringing the total up to thirty-two. If signed into law, H.R. 242 would reduce costs for older Americans by requiring the federal government to negotiate lower Part D prescription drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries..Now, a new fight over the practice has emerged as Health groups and consumer advocates are mounting a lobbying campaign to shape forthcoming federal rules around the ban. These are the same health groups that fought bitterly during the law's drafting about who would pick up the costs they could no longer bill to patients..A major factor in delaying Social Security is your life expectancy, and the age at which you would come out ahead. Chances are you would be ahead by your early 80s. Average life expectancy for men is 84 and nearly 87 for women, and more people these days are living well into their 90s..The Lower Drug Costs Now Act contains additional provisions to combat relentless prices increases. For example, the bill would expand Medicare Part D benefits to include dental, vision, and hearing coverage. And it would establish a new ,000 out-of-pocket limit on prescription drug costs. I'm proud to be a cosponsor of this bill, because American seniors shouldn't be subjected to unfair price hikes on lifesaving medications - especially when other industrialized countries are paying lower prices for identical drugs..Thus, under this hypothetical legislation, benefit obligations could not be met after the depletion of the asset reserves and elimination of payroll taxes. If this hypothetical legislation were enacted, with no alternative source of revenue to replace the elimination of payroll taxes on earned income paid on January 1, 2021 and thereafter, we estimate that DI Trust Fund asset reserves would become permanently depleted in about the middle of calendar year 2021, with no ability to pay DI benefits thereafter. We estimate that OASI Trust Fund reserves would become permanently depleted by the middle of calendar year 2023, with no ability to pay OASI benefits thereafter..A new study recently found that Social Security benefits have lost 34 percent of their purchasing power since 2000 due to rising costs and inadequate COLAs. Do you support the bipartisan CPI-E Act, which would make the COLA more fair and adequate?.The CMS announced new streamlined payment mechanisms for healthcare provider transactions this week. Doctors, hospitals, health plans, and states will all see reduced administrative costs under CMS' larger "administrative simplification" initiative..Such large trials are unlikely in the rush to field a vaccine and the result could be a dangerous erosion of public trust. The yearly flu shot carries a risk of less than 1 in 1 million cases of the neurological complication Guillain-Barre syndrome. But even with that low a risk, close to half of Americans refuse to get it.