Personally, I think the Senate’s passing of their Deficit Reduction Act has many pluses, and perhaps a minus or two also. One of the minus components that’s the most distressing – although it doesn’t apply to me personally – was the requirement to strip the insulin price control portions in order to get the required votes. Holy Cow, why should a life preserving medication like this that’s been around for 100 years have gotten so expensive, and most expensive in the U.S. Shameful! Here’s look at the costs for insulin in the rest of the world, the map is interactive and presents some gut-wrenching figures.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country
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In fairness, don’t most of the cheaper countries’ governments subsidize the costs?
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Possibly a good point, but I can find little online, at least, to support or confirm it. Perhaps I’m not using the correct words in googling for links, but none of the results respond to “subsidize”. There are some third-world countries that flat dispense it for free which is a bit of a shock in itself. Perhaps you can find more. Apparently, one can purchase, legally or illegally, legitimate insulin in Canada or Mexico for a small fraction of the U.S. price, and I’m sure those governments aren’t subsidizing U.S. buyers.
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I believe the insulin price fixing was in violation of some parliamentarian ruling. I found this comment in several articles:
… the parliamentarian ruled a cap on insulin prices in the private market a violation of Senate rules
As for the rest of the bill…I don’t see any provisions in there to reduce inflation. There are the typical increased tax provisions and increased spending provisions. Seems that many economists agree it does nothing for inflation:
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This is huge
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Allows Medicare to negotiate drug price
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Prevents price increases on drugs Medicare buys
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Caps out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors to max of $2000 per year
Some blood cancer patients are paying tens of thousands a year for meds. My wife is one such patient and I dread retirement because of the cost of Revlimid.
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Adding 87,000 new IRS agents should scare everyone…!
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What exactly are you scared about? Most Americans are not able to itemize any longer. The IRS will be going after the big fish.
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I should have said “In fairness don’t most other countries have government/socialized medicine programs in place?”
I once came down with, and was treated for, a serious blood infection problem in NZ while visiting there and didn’t pay a dime for anything, including prescription medicine. Neither did my health insurance carrier.
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Actually it shouldn’t frighten anyone… I hope you’re included in that group? I have no reason to fear, do you?
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Maybe they were being sarcastic. I think 87,000 agents is a great idea… maybe they will actually be able to provide phone service again. Maybe they will be able to go after tax criminals again. If you don’t enforce laws, you invite chaos. We’re on the road to ending up like Greece or Mexico, where no one pays the taxes they owe.
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The $80 billion to the IRS is spread over the next 10 years, it covers modernization of the software and hardware, and the hiring will be incremental over a period of years. I predict that this will provide a very high ROI, especially for a governmental investment. I’m hoping to be around in 10 years to see my predictions confirmed.
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I know, how could it not have a high ROI they’re collecting revenue
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This is the best I could find on determining the ROI from additional IRS funding and the additional revenue collected:
Excerpt here:
According to the CBO, the bill’s 10-year, $124 billion increase in the IRS budget would generate $204 billion in new revenue by cracking down on tax avoidance
So we are talking about roughly a 75% cumulative ROI over a ten-year span…which is nothing to really get all that excited about.
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They can predict how much is lost due to tax avoidance?
Begs two questions:
1- how do they know?
2- why didn’t they go after this before?
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Statistics. They know the production rate per agent. heck every corporation computes revenue and profit per employee.They know the size of the economy and the revenue that should be coming in.
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So, “We know lots of people owe us money, so you new guys find it and get it.”
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According to the CBO, the bill’s 10-year, $124 billion increase in the IRS budget would generate $204 billion in new revenue by cracking down on tax avoidance
A WaPo story points out that only about 1/2 of increased budgeting goes toward enforcement. Past administrations have hamstrung the IRS to the point where they’re still running non-interconnected computers programmed in leading-edge software like COBOL.
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87000… How many big fish are there.
Even the biased press are saying that many will be as low as $40,000 This is an attack on small Business, who unlike the elite do not have the ability to fight.
This is great news for the big guys who have lots of Accountants and Lawyers. As for the little guys, after being shut down for as much as 2 years… now this.
New IRS orders…
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Your “bias press” is right, they currently only have the manpower and expertise to go after the smaller fry in bigger numbers. It cost too much to go up against the million/billionaire class with their high powered tax experts and legal beagles. I’ve heard it said that one of the reasons an average taxpayer can’t get phone contact with IRS agents is because the lawyers of the big spenders under investigation keep the phone lines tied up running the agents in circles.
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So the “big spenders” and their attorneys are using the public IRS hotlines?? I don’t think so.
The solution is of course to simplify the tax code…but politicians aren’t interested in that because it gives them power. We could significantly reduce the amount spent on enforcement and corporate and individual compliance. Sounds like a win for everyone except the big government types…
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