Coronavirus and the U.S. Drug Supply .Super-Committee Republicans offer a 300 billion dollar tax-revenue concession. After an initial pledge not to raise taxes over the next decade, Republicans are willing to allow tax increases to help meet the 1.2 trillion dollar debt-reduction mandate by November 23rd. .With over 1 million supporters, The Senior Citizens League is one of the nation's largest nonpartisan seniors groups. Located just outside Washington, D.C., its mission is to promote and assist members and supporters, to educate and alert senior citizens about their rights and freedoms as U.S. Citizens, and to protect and defend the benefits senior citizens have earned and paid for. .Sources: "Under New Cost-Cutting Medicare Rule, Same Surgery, Same Place, Different Bill," Susan Jaffe, Kaiser Health News, March 23, 2021. .This question is signficant in light of proposals to "reform" Social Security. Several proposals, including "progressive indexing" of the benefit formula, involve changes similar to those that were enacted in 1977 that led to the Notch disparity. When proposals to change the benefit formula are debated, Members of Congress, the media, and the public tend to focus on the anticipated percentage of reduction. The danger of doing this, however, is that the assumptions used at the time often bear little resemblence to what accually occurs. .The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) the agency within the Department of Labor that gathers information about prices that consumers pay in order to determine the inflation rate, and therefore the COLA for next year, has let it be known that because of the virus they are going to have to estimate some of the costs of goods and services instead of finding out what they actually are. .On Tuesday, new and veteran lawmakers in the House and Senate met on Capitol Hill for the swearing in of the 115th Congress. As expected, Congressman Paul Ryan (WI-1) was re-elected to the Speaker position with 239 votes in the House, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (CA-12) was re-elected to the House Minority Leader position with 189 votes. .The foam has been more effective in clearing most of Graves' symptoms and her Medicare Part D plan has paid for most of the cost of the "golden foam" so far. But Graves is keeping use of the medicine to a minimum, not only for health reasons, but because she doesn't want to run through her Part D initial coverage limit and hit the doughnut hole. .Sources: "The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2016," U.S. Census Bureau, September 201"How Many Seniors Are Living in Poverty? National and State Estimates Under the Official and Supplement Poverty Measures in 2016," Kaiser Family Foundation, March 2, 2018.