US Now Spends $1 Billion a Year Detaining Immigrant Kids

Plus, a new way to track soaring drug prices By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey New Indexes Track Rising Drug Prices Bloomberg News today introduced [price indexes]( for some of the most common and best-known drugs. The indexes cover 40 of the most widely used treatments across six categories: “diabetes, cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.” The indexes are intended to be an easy way to keep track of the costs of those treatments — and keep politicians accountable for their promises. “It’s a look at whether Trump's rhetoric on prices since he was elected has had a major impact,” Bloomberg’s team writes. “(Hint: it hasn’t.)” The indexes show that, across all six categories, list prices of drugs have risen far faster than overall inflation since June 2015. Prices for 10 diabetes drugs, for example, rose 25.6 percent on average, while prices for five autoimmune treatments including rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira, the best-selling drug in the world, rose by more than 40 percent on average. The news service says it will update the indexes periodically as prices change. [Share this story →]( Stat of the Day “[A widely cited]( study published in The New England Journal of Medicine used data from 1999 to estimate that about 30 percent of American health care expenditures were the result of administration, about twice what it is in Canada. If the figures hold today, they mean that out of the average of [about $19,000]( that U.S. workers and their employers pay for family coverage each year, $5,700 goes toward administrative costs.” – Health-care expert Austin Frakt in a piece at [The New York Times' Upshot]( on the "astonishingly high" administrative costs of the U.S. health care system The U.S. Now Spends $1 Billion a Year Detaining Immigrant Kids Detaining immigrant children has become a $1 billion business, the Associated Press [reported]( Friday. Grants from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “for shelters, foster care and other child welfare services for detained unaccompanied and separated children” climbed to $958 million in 2017, up from $74.5 million a decade earlier, an AP analysis found. Nearly 12,000 children ranging in age from a few months to 17 years old are now being housed in dozens of facilities across 15 states, AP said. The children are being housed while they await immigration proceedings for their parents or asylum proceedings if they arrived in the U.S. without their parents. “It was never intended to be a foster care system with more than 10,000 children in custody at an immediate cost to the federal taxpayer of over $1 billion dollars per year,” Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families, a division of HHS, said in a statement to the AP. The largest recipients of federal grant money for such child housing and welfare services have been Southwest Key, which has gotten $1.39 billion for shelters, and Baptist Child & Family Services, which has received $942 million. HHS in May issued requests for bids for five more projects that could cost more than $500 million. Additional contracts are expected to open for bidding in October, AP said. [Share this story →]( Economists See More Growth Ahead Most business economists in the U.S. [expect]( the economy to keep chugging along over the next three months, with rising corporate sales driving additional hiring and wage increases for workers. The tax cuts, however, don’t seem to be playing a role in hiring and investment plans. And the trade conflicts stirred up by the Trump administration are having a negative influence, with the majority of economists at goods-producing firms who replied to the most recent survey by the National Association for Business Economics saying that their companies were putting investments on hold as they wait to see how things play out. Stock Buybacks Soar to Another Record U.S. companies announced more than $346 billion in share buybacks in the second quarter of 2018, according to data released by the investment research firm TrimTabs last week, shattering the previous record of $242 billion set in the first quarter of the year. Sixty-three firms announced buybacks of more than $1 billion during the quarter, with Apple’s $100 billion buyback plan leading the way, the research firm said. The total included 19 financial services firms announcing a combined $112 billion in buybacks. “Corporate America’s actions suggest that most of the benefits of the corporate tax cut will flow to investors in general and top corporate executives in particular,” TrimTabs [said]( according to the Financial Times. The buybacks may not be having quite the intended effect, however. Critics say the purchases are meant to boost stocks and thereby further enrich senior executives, whose compensation is typically tied to share prices. But The Wall Street Journal [reported]( last week that the buybacks aren’t doing much to increase share prices. Of the roughly 350 companies in the S&P 500 that have announced share buybacks this year, 57 percent are actually underperforming the index as a whole (as of July 8). [Share this story →]( One thing bringing the Left and Right together, aside from astonishment and chagrin over President Trump’s performance today at his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, is baseball. [The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib]( (paywall) takes a fun look at the “perhaps small, yet undeniable” role that the national pastime plays “in bridging the increasingly stark divides in Washington.” The All-Star Game is tomorrow night. The Home Run Derby, with a relatively weak field, is tonight at 8 p.m. ET. Tell your friends they can [sign up here]( to get their own copy. We always welcome your feedback. Email yrosenberg@thefiscaltimes.com. Or connect with us on Twitter: [@yuvalrosenberg]( [@mdrainey]( and [@TheFiscalTimes](. New Tax on Non-Profits Hits Public Universities The Republican tax bill signed into law late last year imposed a 21 percent tax on employees at non-profits who earn more than $1 million a year. According to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education cited by [Bloomberg]( there were 12 presidents of public universities who received compensation of at least $1 million in 2017, with James Ramsey of the University of Louisville topping the list at $4.3 million. Presidents aren’t the only ones in higher education facing potentially higher tax bills as a result of the law. Endowment managers could also get hit with the tax, as could football coaches, some of whom earn substantially more than the presidents of their institutions. News - [Republicans Target Elections with More Deficit-Boosting Tax Cuts]( – Reuters - [The Democratic Debate on What Counts as ‘Medicare for All’]( – Axios - [Health Care Cost Control: Where Do We Go from Here?]( – Health Affairs - [Trump White House Finds New Reason to Target Medicaid]( – Washington Post - [More Than 7,000 Fail to Meet Medicaid Work Requirements in Arkansas]( – The Hill - [VA Doctor Shortage Fueled by Management Issues, Poor Pay]( – Washington Post - [HHS Plans to Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines]( – Daily Beast - [Obamacare, Once a GOP Target, Is Now a Midterm Rallying Cry for Democrats]( – Washington Post - [The One That Got Away: Obamacare and the Drug Industry]( – Politico - [Senators Seek Data on Tax Law's Impact on Charitable Giving]( – The Hill - [In Florida, Midterm Elections Hold Faint Hope for Medicaid Expansion]( – Kaiser Health News - [More Than 130,000 Injured Vets Due Big Tax Refunds Because of Computer Glitch]( – MoneyWatch - [Proposals Would Help Homeowners, Make Ex-Presidents Pay for Office Supplies]( – Roll Call - [Pence Family's Failed Gas Stations Cost Taxpayers $20 Million]( – Associated Press - [Australian Experiment Kills Over 80% of Disease-Spreading Mosquitoes]( – Axios Views and Analysis - [The Rising Federal Deficit Is Fueling Growth]( – Justin Fox, Bloomberg - [What Is Medicare For All?]( – Teresa Ghilarducci, Forbes - [Think National Debt Is Far-off Problem? Think Again]( – Maya MacGuineas, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget - [The $247 Trillion Global Debt Bomb]( – Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post - [The Trump Administration’s New Poverty Report Builds a Phony Rationale to Punish the Poor]( – Jared Bernstein, Washington Post - [Fiscal Hawks’ Tales of Doom Do Not Fly with the Young]( – Alexandra Scaggs, Financial Times - [The Working Poor Need Help. Keep the Expansion Alive]( – Noah Smith, Bloomberg - [Fact Check: Rep. Claudia Tenney’s Claim That Trump’s Tax Cuts Already Paid for Themselves]( – Salvador Rizzo, Washington Post - [Trump’s Latest Move on Obamacare Is Incompetent — or Sabotage]( – Washington Post Editorial Board - [Hospitals Can Save Money on Drugs Without Washington’s Help]( – Patrick Yoder, STAT - [You Can’t Put a Price on a Hip Replacement, and That’s a Problem]( – Steve Cohen, Wall Street Journal - [These Tax Laws Are Holding Back California’s Housing Market]( – Virginia Postrel, Bloomberg - [How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Puts Affordable Housing Production at Risk]( – Corianne Scally, Amanda Gold and Nicole DuBois, Urban Institute - [Implementation of a 'Universal Basic Income' Program Would Be a Disaster]( – Greg Archetto, The Hill - [Colorado State, Rutgers, Eastern Michigan University: Fiscal Insanity in College Sports]( – Richard Vedder, Forbes - [Four Reasons Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums]( – Barry Ritholtz, Bloomberg Copyright © 2018 The Fiscal Times, All rights reserved. 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