In the News

The big story, the one that made news directors perk up their ears, made congressmen call hearings, and made jaws drop across the country was the story about a 62 year-old drug – a senior citizen of a drug – called Daraprim that overnight went from $13.50 a tablet to $750 a tablet. A 5000% increase for no other reason than a company called Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the drug and raised the price because it could. The drug is used to treat malaria, HIV, and other infections.

The office of U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett was among the stops a San Marcos delegation made on a recent trip to Washington, D.C. To lobby for federal relief in the wake of this year’s two devastating floods.

WASHINGTON — Citing Texans’ complaints of soaring prescription costs, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett is leading an effort in Congress seeking causes and remedies. Doggett, D-Austin, has formed an entity called the Prescription Drug Pricing Task Force, and one of the initial efforts is pressuring the Obama administration to use its authority to stem an ongoing rise in the costs of pharmaceuticals. […] Doggett and allies point to price boosts for many drugs, evidenced in a government study last week showing a 12.2 percent increase last year in prescription drug spending. Leigh Purvis, director of Health Services Research at AARP’s Public Policy Institute, has been studying drug pricing since 2004. In a bipartisan investigation, the Senate Finance Committee released emails last week showing that executives of California-based Gilead Sciences were keenly aware of potential public outrage when they set the $84,000 cost for a 12-week treatment of Sovaldi, a potent new drug for hepatitis C. […] the Senate’s bipartisan Special Committee on Aging is investigating the decision by Turing Pharmaceuticals, formed recently by hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, to raise the price of the anti-infection drug Daraprim by 5,000 percent — from $13.50 a pill to $750. Doggett said he also will be looking at Affordable Care Act programs for potential relief while pressing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of Health and Human Services, for more transparency related to negotiated drug prices. For injections of Faslodex, used to combat metastatic breast cancer, she was billed between $5,000 and $6,000 a month.

Elected and appointed officials and civic and religious leaders gathered together on Saturday at Mission San José to celebrate the official inscription of the UNESCO World Heritage designation of the Spanish colonial Missions and the Alamo, the culmination of an effort that goes back nearly a decade.

A packed program of speakers included U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Mayor Ivy Taylor, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, Alamo Director Becky Dinnin, U.S. Rep Lloyd Doggett, San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, Mexican Consul General José Antonio Larios and Spanish Consul General Enric Panés. The 18th-century Spanish colonial missions and the Rancho de las Cabras in Wilson County were collectively listed as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in July at its annual convention in Bonn, Germany. About 10 minutes into the program, Jewell unveiled the official plaque, lifting away the colorful zarape draped around it with help from Mardi Arce, superintendent of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. Taylor called the designation a “validation of both our deep pride in our heritage here and our most ambitious aspirations for our community.” “Instead, the ongoing recognition, promotion and preservation of these special places will be the true culmination of the years invested in successful collaborations, the decades spent promoting and restoring the missions, their fields, their acequias and their churches,” Taylor said. In addition to the inscription ceremony, Saturday’s activities at the mission included an archaeology festival outside the mission walls with hands-on demonstrations in corn grinding and adobe brick-making.

Student debt is a looming black cloud affecting many students in America. According to the U.S. Department of Education, student loan interest rates have gone down about one-third of a percent in the last year from 4.66% to 4.29%, which according to Blake Ellis with CNN Money Investigations, is still crippling forty million Americans.
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett attended a student press conference at the Highland Campus Sept. 4, to speak about H.R. 1260, The American Opportunity Tax Credit Act of 2015, a bill which he is both the author and sponsor.

Doggett addressed the concerns of NARFE members, including issues such as Medicare, Social Security, Government Pension Offset, Federal Employees Health Benefits, salaries, cost of living raises and the data breach. Open Season is the time for federal employees, retirees and survivors to make changes to their Federal Health Insurance.