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COLA cuts: The White House proposes switching to the more slowly - growing measure of inflation, the chained consumer price index, to calculate annual COLAs. The proposal has bipartisan support in Congress. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would cut spending on Social Security about 7 billion over the next ten years and bring in roughly 4 billion in higher taxes. To learn how the proposal would impact your benefits, try TSCL's Chained COLA calculator..Cost of alcohol or drug-abuse treatment..Several expert witnesses such as Mr. Sanket Shah, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, emphasized the role that data analytics can have in proactively identifying patients who may be at risk for ​opioid addiction. Ranking Member Patty Murray said, "Data has to be easy to use, but hard to misuse," in reference to the concern that patient privacy also must be protected..Congress passed legislation to end the practice at the end of the year, but as with so much other legislation Congress passes, it gave an outline of new policy but it left a great deal up to the President to work out the specifics..Take a complete list of all your prescriptions, vitamins, and supplements with you on your next visit to the doctor. Note the dosage and the quantity you use monthly. Find out whether you still need to take them all, and if there's a less-expensive brand name or generic you can try before settling on new expensive brand meds..Addressing prescription drug prices is also one of my top priorities as Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The Committee launched a comprehensive investigation of the prescription drug industry's pricing practices in January of this year, focusing on the drugs that are the costliest to Medicare. In January I convened the Committee's first hearing of the 116th Congress on this topic, inviting AARP's National Volunteer President to testify about the challenges seniors face in affording their drugs..Reduces the costs of your drugs..Supreme Court Rules on Immigration Orders.Retired seniors have been far more accepting of vaccines than their working-age counterparts. Their full vaccination rate is about 82%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because they're susceptible to severe illness, even relatively few unvaccinated seniors mean more deaths -- and more crowded hospitals -- than would occur in a larger pool of younger adults.