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According to Bloomberg Government, members of the House Appropriations Committee are still negotiating the spending limits for each subcommittee, and they are far from a deal. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer told reporters this week that he's doubtful Congress will finish the omnibus before the looming deadline..Leadership Elections Kick Off "Lame Duck" Session.The federal government remained partially closed this week for the fifth straight week. It remains the longest government shutdown in United States history, and at the time of writing this week's legislative update, only minor progress had been made towards a bipartisan deal to end it..How Would Importing Prescription Drugs From Other Countries Help People in Part D Plans?.Public benefits counseling.On Monday, the CBO released its highly anticipated analysis of the BCRA health reform legislation released late last week by Republican leaders in the Senate. The report shows that if signed into law, the bill would leave 22 million more individuals uninsured than current law, and it would hit older, poorer people the hardest especially those between the ages of fifty and sixty-four with less than ,200 in annual income. Those individuals would see health insurance premium increases of 200 percent or more under the BCRA..Under current Social Security law, that's all that's required to later claim benefits. To file for benefits, individuals don't need to be citizens, but must have a workauthorized Social Security number. Those receiving work authorization would become vested for benefits with as little as ten years of earnings. The oldest of those who are eligible for the deferred action could feasibly have worked illegally long enough to already be "vested" for Social Security — including disability. This would add to program solvency problems since the Congressional Budget Office and Social Security Trustees have estimated that the Social Security disability trust fund will be fully insolvent by 2016..This week, lawmakers in the Senate voted to approve a permanent repeal of Medicare's flawed sustainable growth rate formula, and The Senior Citizens League announced its support for one new piece of legislation..Your Part D drug plan would never tell you this, but the alarming fact is that there is no limit to what you might spend out-of-pocket for your prescriptions drugs in any given year. While this may not seem like much of a worry if you just take a few common generics, it becomes a far greater concern should you ever need high priced drugs - or have a medication bill of more than 0 per month. That could happen to any of us at any time.