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Following the Senate HELP Committee hearing, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health met on February 28th to discuss how law enforcement and opioid addiction specialists can help combat the epidemic in their communities. Chairman Michael Burgess highlighted several promising bills that could help put a stop to the epidemic. Once such example is H.R. 5041, the Safe Disposal of Unused Medication Act, which would allow hospice workers to dispose of extra opioid medication an action they are currently prohibited from doing..Unlicensed loan offers through the mail, via telephone, or door-to-door. "Auto payments of per month! Interest rates as low as 2.4 APR! Keys to the door of your next car!" It's not unusual to find auto loan offers in your mailbox, but beware. Make sure any lender you work with is legitimate, and licensed..Using this approach would put low to middle benefit recipients on more equal footing. The draw- back however, is that people with higher benefits would experience a benefit cut. They would not receive a COLA based on the benefit that they actually receive, and the dollar amount would be lower than what they would have received under current law. While that loss would be relatively small at first, it would compound and rapidly grow deeper over time. It would tend to lower the total amount of income that retirees with higher benefits could expect to receive from Social Security. This sort of proposed change to the COLA would quite likely encounter fierce push back, particularly from those affected, and even from middle-income people who delayed their retirement perhaps by as much as 4 years or more to allow their benefit to grow to its maximum..To fix this, I've introduced the FAIR Generics Act, which would stop pay-for-delay deals once and for all. Doing so would make high-quality, lower-priced generic prescription medications available to patients sooner, thus lowering prescription drug prices in numerous cases..A new analysis by Johnson compared the growth of average benefits since 2009 with what retirees would have received assuming Social Security law provided a COLA guarantee of at least 3 percent, as has been proposed by some Members of Congress, including Representative Eliot Engel. Johnson's analysis found that an average benefit of ,075 in 2009 would be 6.50 per month higher in 2018 - about 17 percent higher - had Social Security recipients been protected by a 3 percent COLA guarantee. Over the past nine years, the average retiree would have received about ,947 more in total Social Security income..Last month the Trump administration reported that a future COVID-19 vaccine would be free for nearly all Americans, except for seniors with traditional Medicare coverage..This year, more than 50% of Social Security beneficiaries paid taxes on their benefits, even though many of them only made twice the federal poverty level in income. Do you believe this is fair, and if not, what should be done about it?.TSCL agrees that the WEP and the GPO must be repealed as soon as possible so that public employees receive the retirement benefits they have earned and deserve. We look forward to working closely with Sen. Brown in the coming months to help build support for his important new bill..Under current law noncitizens can file a claim for Social Security benefits if other qualifications are met. Currently Social Security counts all earnings toward Social Security entitlement, even for jobs worked while illegally present in the United States. Do you think any change is needed to this policy and if so what do you propose?