Also putting pressure on the program, TSCL anticipates that more people will file claims for benefits. While employment was at record levels just a few months ago, many older adults postponed filing for benefits to allow their Social Security payouts and retirement accounts to grow. Now, faced with paid sick leave and unemployment benefits ending, older workers are unlikely to be able to afford to wait to file for benefits if they have lost their jobs. In addition, workers lucky enough to have 401(k)s and IRAs have experienced significant losses in the value of those retirement accounts and will be depending on Social Security all the more. Big changes in equity prices reduce the distributions from those accounts. .According to Bloomberg News, "Budget officials analyzed prices of 176 popular brand name drugs and found the price for a 30-day supply of medication was 8 on average through Medicaid and 3 through Medicare Part D, which pays for prescription drugs in retail pharmacies. The government also paid twice as much on the same drugs through Medicare versus the Veterans Affairs program." .Should Congress hand over accountability for decisions about Medicare cuts to an unelected board? That's what lawmakers did in 2010 when they passed the Affordable Care Act. The law included a controversial provision to create a Medicare cost-cutting board, known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). .TSCL believes the drug problem could explode this year. Citing massive "sequester" budget and staff cuts, federal officials are set to scale back or drop investigations into Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse cases. The Department of Health and Human Services may lose a total of 400 staffers and the existing staff is stretched so thin that it was unable to investigate about 1,200 cases of Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse last year. .Because of the strong push on the part of the President and members of Congress to find a way to lower drug prices, and getting drugs from other countries where the cost is lower has become popular as a solution, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently released a proposal to let states submit drug importation plans for federal approval. .Although Part D plans are given leeway to vary how they structure their plans here is a breakdown of the standard Medicare Part D plan cost sharing in 2020: .In addition, the Social Security 2100 Act would improve the program's solvency by applying the payroll tax to income over 0,000 and by gradually increasing the payroll tax rate from 6.2 percent to 7.4 percent – an extra fifty cents per week for the average worker. These two modest changes would ensure that the Social Security program remains solvent through the year 2100 and beyond. .The Senate was back in Washington this week, holding hearings and confirming judicial and executive branch nominees. And while those are official duties of the Senate, no new legislation was passed. .Although immigration law forbids work without authorization, immigrants do find jobs, and the majority of employers report their earnings to SSA. Each year SSA receives hundreds of millions of W-2s. When the name and Social Security number (SSN) do not match SSA's records, the W-2 is held in the Earnings Suspense File (ESF). Recent data indicates that in recent years the ESF is growing at an unprecedented pace and the cumulative wages represented is now 5 billion. These wages can later be reinstated to valid Social Security numbers when immigrants gain work authorization. Because earnings are used to determine both the number of quarters of coverage worked for insured status, and the initial retirement benefit, this poses a substantial liability to the Social Security Trust Fund and would worsen its solvency.