Key House Democrat Formally Asks For Trump’s Tax Returns
President Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he was “not inclined” to adhere to a demand from a congressional Democrat for the IRS to hand over copies of the president’s tax returns.
Susan Walsh/AP
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Susan Walsh/AP
Updated at 7:15 p.m. ET
Democrats have long called for President Trump to release his tax returns, and now a key congressman has put in a formal request with the IRS.
Massachusetts Democrat Richard Neal, chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, is requesting six years of Trump’s personal tax returns and the returns for some of his businesses for the years 2013-2018. Neal argues that Congress, and his committee in particular, need to conduct oversight of the IRS, including its policy of auditing the tax returns of sitting presidents.
“We have completed the necessary groundwork for a request of this magnitude and I am certain we are within our legitimate legislative, legal, and oversight rights,” he said in a statement about the request.
Neal said the action was about “policy, not politics.”
“My actions reflect an abiding reverence for our democracy and our institutions, and are in no way based on emotion of the moment or partisanship,” he said.
In his letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, Neal asked for the information by April 10.
Trump has been unique compared with recent presidents in his refusal to release his personal tax returns. He said on Wednesday he was “not inclined” to adhere to the demand.
Taxpayer information is legally supposed to remain confidential, but a 1924 provision gives Congress some access. It has rarely been invoked, University of Virginia law professor George Yin told NPR in October 2018. That provision allows the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation to request the tax information.
Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee started pushing the idea of getting Trump’s tax returns after the president took office, but Republican majorities in Congress in 2017 and 2018 would not take action on the issue.
In February, with Democrats freshly in control of the House of Representatives, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged patience in going after the tax returns.
“It’s not a question of just sending a letter,” Pelosi said. “You have to do it in a very careful way.”
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said on Wednesday that “the law is crystal clear” that the Treasury Department must adhere to Neal’s request.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the Ways and Means Committee last month that if such a request were to be made, the administration “will follow the law and we will protect the president as we would protect any individual taxpayer under their rights.”
Express Scripts Takes Steps To Cut Insulin’s Price To Patients
A medical assistant administers insulin to an adolescent patient who has Type 1 diabetes. Cigna’s pharmacy benefit manager, Express Scripts, says it covers 1.4 million people who take insulin.
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As the heat turns up on drug manufacturers who determine the price of insulin and the health insurers and middlemen who determine what patients pay, one company — Cigna’s Express Scripts — announced Wednesday it will take steps by the end of the year to help limit the drug’s cost to consumers.
Express Scripts, which manages prescription drug insurance for more than 80 million people, is launching a “patient assurance program” that Steve Miller, Cigna’s chief clinical officer, says “caps the copay for a patient at $25 a month for their insulin — no matter what.”
The move by Express Scripts comes as lawmakers are focused on high drug prices and listening to stories about patients who can’t afford their medication.
Insulin has become a major focus. A Minnesota man died last year, according to his mother, when he tried to ration his insulin because he couldn’t afford the $1,300 monthly cost.
Though the drug has been in use for more than a century, its price in the U.S. is 10 times higher than it was 20 years ago, according to a report by the House of Representatives released last week.
“What we’re hoping is that we’re going to see more diabetics taking more insulin, [fewer] complications for those patients, and hopefully lower health care costs,” Miller tells Shots.
Express Scripts covers 1.4 million people who take insulin, Miller says.
Under the discount program, patients who haven’t met their deductible and normally would have to pay the full retail price for their insulin would pay $25. The same goes for those whose normal copayment is a percentage of that retail price. Miller says on average patients pay about $40 a month for insulin copayments — but the price can vary widely month to month, depending on the design of a patient’s prescription drug plan.
The announcement by Express Scripts, one of the biggest pharmacy benefit managers, comes a day after a subcommittee hearing in the House of Representatives that focused on the high costs of insulin.
Patient advocate Gail DeVore testified at the hearing.
“Every day I get emails from people asking, ‘How do I afford insulin?’ ” DeVore told the members of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. “Every day. And every day I have to help them find a way to find insulin.”
DeVore, who has been dependent on insulin to control her diabetes for 47 years, says the full retail price for her insulin is $1,400 per month. She has good insurance, she says, so her cost for that drug is manageable. But her insurance doesn’t cover a second, fast-acting insulin she sometimes needs, so she says she dilutes it to make it last longer.
A recent study by researchers at Yale found that about a quarter of people with diabetes skip doses to save money or use less of the medication than prescribed.
“Patients who rationed insulin were more likely to have poor control of their blood sugars,” Dr. Kasia Lipska, an endocrinologist and assistant professor at Yale, testified at the hearing. She said patients who don’t maintain good control of their blood sugar run the risk of amputations, blindness and other diabetes complications.
Lipska told the lawmakers that drug companies are raising prices for no apparent reason. She urged the committee members to focus on the list prices of the drugs that pharmaceutical companies set rather than worrying about discounts and rebates.
“The bottom line is that drug prices are set by drugmakers,” she told lawmakers. “The list price for insulin has gone up dramatically — and that’s the price that many patients pay. This is what needs to come down. It’s as simple as that.”
Express Scripts’ program doesn’t do that, Miller acknowledges.
“This is not lowering the price of the drug,” Miller says. “We think there is a whole different issue, and that is, ‘What’s the price of pharmaceuticals in the United States?’ This does not address that. This truly is addressing the pain that patients are experiencing at the counter.”
Last month, Eli Lilly & Co. said it would begin selling an “authorized generic” version of one of its insulin products at half the retail price.
According to Express Scripts, its $25 copay deal will be available near the end of this year to patients who are not covered by a government insurance program (such as Medicare or Medicaid).
The Thistle & Shamrock: World Beat
Hear Afro Celt Sound System on this edition of The Thistle & Shamrock.
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Mark Bennett/Riotsquad Publicity
Circumnavigate the world of Celtic music as we listen to progressive, crossover Celtic roots recordings influenced by Latin, Balkan and African music and rhythms. Artists this week include the Afro Celt Sound System, Eileen Ivers, and The House Band.
Baseball’s Rules For Next Season May Eliminate The LOOGY
Sports commentator Mike Pesca opines on baseball’s left-handed, one-out guy. That’s a left-handed pitcher who’s brought in to face one, usually left-handed, batter. The bullpen staple may be fading.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Major League Baseball officials know the game is a bit slow. The average contest lasted three hours and four minutes last season. New rules for next season would cut down on the number of pitcher changes. Commentator Mike Pesca notes that could end a specialized baseball tradition.
MIKE PESCA: Whither the LOOGY. It’s an acronym. Stands for lefty one-out guy – a left-handed pitcher brought in from the bullpen to face one usually left-handed batter. That’s because lefty pitchers perform better against lefty batters. Then the LOOGY hits the showers. Or, really, maybe just uses one of those body wipes. The job is not that taxing. There are also ROOGYs – righty one-out guys. But as with so much in public life, it would be a false equivalence to compare righties with the lefties. In baseball, it’s much less common for a right-hander to be used in such a specialized manner. Plus, left-handers are a little nuts. Everyone knows that, just like everyone knows redheads are fiery and Canadians are even-keeled. Please don’t bother to test the hypothesis. This is baseball. It’s a lot easier just to go with what everyone knows.
The plan to cut down on how many times a manager can send in a new pitcher will spell doom for the LOOGY. And while baseball is a game of tradition, eliminating LOOGYs next year is a case of conflicting traditions. Normally, the league wouldn’t meddle in how managers use their bullpens. On the other hand, in recent years, managers increasingly used one pitcher to record one out against one batter then sent in an entirely different pitcher to record the next out. This means a pitcher would be removed from the game – pause in the action – a left-hander would be called in from the pen, – pause in the action – he’d get his eight warmup pitches – pause in the action – for enough time to ponder why baseball is the only sport where substitutes get to stop the game and warm up on the field of play. The newly inserted left-handed pitcher might throw one pitch, induce a pop-up or a weak ground out to second and be done.
Now, here’s how it works in real life. I’ll take you to Game Seven of the 2011 World Series, as announced on Fox. The Cardinals’ starting pitcher has reached the seventh inning and then gives up a hit.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: That is rocketed down into the corner.
PESCA: He’s lifted for a LOOGY.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: As Torrealba waits and takes a strike.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD AMBIENCE)
PESCA: And three pitches later, that LOOGY, Arthur Rhodes, gets his one out. And then he is replaced, which brings us to…
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Kinsler, red hot. Takes a strike.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD AMBIENCE)
PESCA: Delivered by the third pitcher in that one inning. All those pitcher substitutions, just so that a LOOGY could get one guy out, have chewed up nine minutes and 18 seconds. That’s why the LOOGY will go the way of the woolly mammoth and the flip phone. It’s not like change is impossible. The game has changed in the past. The spitball used to be allowed. Now it’s banned. That was before this rule, which threatens the lefty one out guy. So it was never illegal for LOOGYs to use LOOGYs. Today’s LOOGYs say they will evolve, that they will show they have what it takes to last an entire half-inning. So maybe the LOOGY will not die out. Maybe there will be an evolution from LOOGY to LITOOGY (ph), the lefty three-out guy. Or, as they may simply call him, pitcher.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Mike Pesca – we brought him in for just that one commentary, and now he’s hitting the showers. He hosts the podcast called The LOOGY? No, no. It’s called “The Gist,” for Slate.
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