Sources: "Vets Break Past World War II Memorial Barricade," Laura Koran and Ashley Killough, CNN, October 1, 2013. .Four Things To Avoid When Shopping For Retirement Housing .Fortunately, H.R. 3 is not the only legislation in either house of Congress that could lower drug prices and accomplish the other things necessary to fix Medicare and Social Security. .2014 Annual Survey of Senior Costs, Mary Johnson, The Senior Citizens League, March 2014. .Vet services are estimated to cost at least 0 per year for dogs, and about 8 per year for cats, while many of us pay much more, even with so-called senior discounts. Diagnostic procedures can cost over ,000, while some surgeries can run in the thousands of dollars. .By the time the Inspector General has performed its audit reports and given CMS its recommendations, CMS has limited, if any, time to collect before the statute of limitation expires. The OIG recommends that CMS should pursue legislation to extend the statute of limitations so that the recovery period exceeds the reopening period for Medicare payments. In addition, the OIG recommends that CMS develop a system to verify that the amount reported collected has actually been collected. TSCL heartily supports these commonsense recommendations. With Congress debating a major Medicare overhaul that would make seniors pay a higher portion of Medicare costs in the future, Congress should move quickly to close the statute of limitation loophole that's costing us millions in lost recoveries. .During these meetings, the following issues were discussed: Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, Social Security Notch fairness, Social Security Totalization Agreement reform, and repeal of both the windfall elimination provision (WEP) and the government pension offset (GPO). Support was expressed for many of these key issues, and TSCL looks forward to working with these offices in the future. .Now there are ads in various parts of the country being run by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, accusing House Republicans of doing the bidding of drug industry donors by opposing the bill. Unremarked upon are the House Democrats who've also received money from the industry — and whose opposition is seen as potentially fatal to the legislation. .Both House and Senate tax reform bills index the individual tax brackets and the standard deduction to the slowly-growing "chained" Consumer Price Index (CPI). This change will result in tax increases for most individuals over time because they will reach higher tax brackets faster than they would under current law. It also increases the probability that lawmakers will apply the inadequate "chained" CPI as a cost-saving measure to other government indexes that grow with inflation, like the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA).