prices – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Home Sales Plunge as a Result of Capping SALT

David Posnett — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 01:58:47 +0000

From the East Hampton Star comes a short notice burried on page B9: “Home Sales Have Plunged”.

October 31, 2019

East End home sales in the third quarter were at an eight-year low, and the inventory of houses on the market has reached a 13-year high, according to a report from the Douglas Elliman Agency.

Sales over all have declined for the seventh quarter in a row, the agency reported. Sales of houses priced at or above $5 million were at their lowest level since 2013.

The slowdown in the real estate market continues to have an adverse impact on the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund. Revenues so far this year total $58.2 million, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. announced on Friday, compared to nearly $73 million in 2018 — a decline of over 20 percent.

The preservation fund, which provides money for land preservation and water quality improvement, receives the proceeds of a 2-percent real estate transfer tax in the five East End towns: East Hampton, Southampton, Shelter Island, Southold, and Riverhead. Over the first nine months of the year, C.P.F. revenues from home sales fell 27.8 percent in East Hampton, 19.2 percent in Southampton, and 31.4 percent in Riverhead. Shelter Island’s were up 27.3 percent, and Southold’s increased by 6 percent.

Looking for a silver lining, Mr. Thiele said the 20-percent decline in overall revenue was an improvement from earlier this year. In May, C.P.F. intake was down 27.4 percent. Still, September’s intake, $5.38 million, was the lowest since March, when $4.56 million was collected.

The Douglas Elliman report attributed the slowdown in the real estate market to the 2017 tax reform law, which placed a $10,000 cap on the amount of state and local taxes — including property taxes — that can be deducted on federal returns. That cap, the report said, has made houses on the East End even less affordable.

Remember the Trump Tax law in Nov. 2017? Apart from a tax give away to the richest and to corporations, there was a mean spirited effort to punish coastal (democratic) states like California and New York, where real estate prices and taxes are high and state taxes too. We used to be able to deduct State And Local Taxes (SALT) from our federal tax income. But the Republicans drafted a bill that omitted these SALT deductions. Then it was amended and the SALT deductions were capped at $10,000. But voters did not like it! And Long Islanders, in particular, did not like it. Average real estate taxes are very high here.

Lee Zeldin had originally voted for Trump’s tax bill, but then the bill came back from the Senate (and a joint conference). Lee caught on that it was unpopular in his district. So he and a number of Rep. colleagues voted against the bill in the end (knowing that it would pass anyway).

At the time there were several blog posts on this tax bill on this site: https://resistancesuffolk.blog/2017/12/02/the-republican-tax-scam/

https://resistancesuffolk.blog/2017/11/11/zeldin-squirming-on-tax-bill/

https://resistancesuffolk.blog/2017/11/10/gaming-the-tax-plan-in-the-hamptons/

This last link (dated Nov. 10, 2017) states

“… the value of your home could decrease! Thanks Mr. Trump & Mr. Zeldin!”

Clearly, one of the concerns was that the capped SALT deductions might hurt housing prices. Now, just 2 years later, it is catching up with us and we are starting to see a major real estate slump.

https://www.leezeldinrecord.com/

Drug Prices: How Pharma Games the System

David Posnett — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 15:55:50 +0000

We have all seen the TV ads for Humira…

What they don’t show is the cost. For instance there are a number of different TNFalpha blockers, including Humira (adalimumab) and Embrel (etanercept). The following site lists their comparable pricing: https://www.goodrx.com/tnf-blockers

These drugs are used for autoimmune disorders like Rheumatoid Arthritis (32%), Psoriasis (30%), Ulcerative Colitis (19%), Crohn’s Disease (19%). These are chronic diseases that can not be “cured”. In stead they are rendered manageable by medication that may have to be taken life long.

Why are these drugs so expensive? Priti Krishtel explains:

A Humira Prescription Costs $38,000 A Year Because Our Patent System Is Being Abused

Priti Krishtel

Guest Writer

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sue Lee, 76, has plaque psoriasis, an incurable, chronic skin condition that causes itchy, painful sores. To give her some relief, Lee’s doctor prescribed Humira, a patent-protected drug with no generic option. In 2012, the drug cost about $19,000 a year. Today, it costs more than $38,000 a year. Even with Medicare, Lee, who retired last year and lives in Kentucky, would have to drain the little savings she has in order to afford the drug.

Retirement should be the peaceful denouement of a lifetime of work. Instead, millions of seniors are being forced to draw down on their retirement savings or forgo necessities like food and rent to pay for arbitrarily and mercilessly high-priced prescription drugs. Some skip doses to make ends meet or, like Lee, simply suffer in silence. As the proportion of seniors to the total population grows, the problem is only going to get worse.

Not surprisingly, older Americans are hit especially hard by high drug prices. People ages 65 and older use far more prescription drugs than younger Americans; at any given time, older Americans are taking an average of 4.5 different prescriptions. Seniors are also three times more likely than those in their 20s to need costly specialty drugs, like Humira, that treat relatively uncommon conditions and have few, if any, generic alternatives. Making matters worse, over the last decade drugs widely used by older Americans have tripled in price on average, far exceeding the rate of inflation.

With 1 in 5 Americans expected to be 65 or older by 2030, the country is staring down the barrel of a massive health care and fiscal crisis.

There are a lot of reasons why drug prices in the U.S. are so high. They aren’t regulated, so pharma companies can and do set prices as high as they want. And Medicare, the largest purchaser of drugs, is forbidden from negotiating those prices down. But another important and often overlooked factor is the ongoing manipulation of our patent system.

An analysis released last month by my organization, the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, shows that there have been an astonishing 247 patents filed on Humira, nearly half of them in just the last four years. Richard Gonzalez, CEO of the drug’s maker, AbbVie, has said that “any company seeking to market a biosimilar version of Humira will have to contend with this extensive patent estate, which AbbVie intends to enforce vigorously.” In other words, the company has created such a morass of patents around Humira as to deter generic competition in the U.S. for years to come.

It’s a deliberate strategy designed to prolong the company’s monopoly, and AbbVie isn’t alone in using it. In a separate report released by I-MAK in August, we found there are an average of 125 patent applications filed and 71 patents granted for each of the 12 highest-grossing drugs in America. In many cases, these “add-on” patents were for minor or obvious modifications — a different dosage form, for example — that don’t meet the standard for breakthrough invention that the patent system was designed to reward. Still, they have often succeeded in prolonging exclusivity well beyond the 20 years of protection intended under U.S. law. For example, the U.S. patent on Humira expired in 2016, but add-on patents and reported settlements made with generic suppliers will keep generic alternatives out of reach of patients until at least 2023.

For Lee in Kentucky, the high cost of Humira in the U.S. means her psoriasis hasn’t been treated in nearly a year. When the sores get really bad, she puts ice packs on her body, sits at her desk and fights back tears.

With 1 in 5 Americans expected to be 65 or older by 2030, the country is staring down the barrel of a massive health care and fiscal crisis. Unless something is done to stop frivolous patents from delaying generic entry, Medicare and the millions of seniors who rely on it will experience unprecedented strain.

Overpatenting is a problem that needs to be brought into full public view, starting with our representatives in Congress holding hearings so that patent abuse can be exposed. Right now, America’s patent system is far more sympathetic to claims of “originality” than those of other countries, and less likely to consider public health impact. It will ultimately take a motivated and mobilized citizenry to enact the necessary reforms to stop this root cause of high drug prices.

If we don’t act now, every one of us will one day face the nightmare of not being able to afford and access the medicines we need. For the millions of Americans like Lee who are in desperate need of relief, that nightmare is right now.

Priti Krishtel is the co-founder and co-executive director of I-MAK.org, a global nonprofit organization of attorneys, scientists and health experts who have worked to lower drug prices for 15 years.