Opinion Pieces

If you had a tough Tax Day this year, you are not alone. According to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the estimated time burden to complete IRS forms is approximately 8.1 billion hours. That is 25 hours per American and 53 hours per taxpayer. Even worse, it cost $85.6 billion to complete this paperwork, according to the IRS. I have good news, though. When you filed your taxes earlier this year, it’s the last time you will have to navigate the old, outdated, burdensome, and over... Read more

For the past five years, Georgia has been named the top state for business. This is certainly something to be proud of, however, as the representative of Southeast Georgia, it is my mission to ensure that this top-rated business climate reaches not only Atlanta, but every corner of our state. Creating fairness in opportunity for urban and rural areas alike was a major goal in crafting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) to reform our nation’s tax code. One example of this fairness includes the red... Read more

Since President Trump took office, our economy has been strong – low unemployment, the lowest African American unemployment since the statistic has been kept by the Department of Labor, high consumer confidence, and record setting stock market gains. Since February 2017, 2.28 million jobs have been added to the economy. Now, America can add wage growth to this impressive list. Before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was signed into law, wage growth had been essentially stagnant since the end of ... Read more

They Need Cures Now The Augusta Chronicle By: Representative Earl L. "Buddy" Carter Maybe your grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, your friend lives with Crohn’s disease, or your colleague’s child battles Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In one way or another, we’ve all been touched by disease, and we all have a different story to tell. As a lifelong health care professional, I saw the heartbreaking devastation of disease and the toll it takes on patients and their families every day. A patient f... Read more

The man behind the curtain in drug price increases The Hill 9/29/2016 By: Rep. Earl L. "Buddy" Carter More so than most issues we deal with in Washington, health care is personal. We all feel it when something changes in our health care system. No one is immune, and for some, those changes mean life or death. It is very understandable, then, that fluctuation in drug prices draws so much public attention. Lifesaving medications are not a choice for a family relying on them to protect a loved one,... Read more

It is no wonder the American people are frustrated with Washington. I was frustrated by midafternoon the first day I was sworn in to represent the First District in Congress. Few things have been more disappointing to me than the political gamesmanship surrounding the federal government’s response to the Zika virus. It is no surprise that Zika is now being locally transmitted in the United States. What is shocking to me is that some in Congress would continue partisan bickering rather than worki... Read more

This spring, I joined over 240 of my colleagues in sending a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) expressing our deep concerns with a sweeping, nationwide experiment that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has proposed. After speaking with patients and physicians in my district, there is no uncertainty that the CMMI experiment with Part B drug payment is the first step to government price controls and it will have negative consequences for millions o... Read more

Before my election to Congress, I served more than thirty years as a community pharmacist. In that time, I witnessed and participated in some of the greatest advancements in the history of medicine. I have seen diseases that once required hospitalization become illnesses treated from home with medication. I have seen an antibiotic regimen that once required four tablets each day for ten days replaced with six tablets over five days. I have seen a deadly disease like Hepatitis C cured by medicati... Read more

When I opened my first pharmacy some twenty-eight years ago, all I asked for was a level playing field and a fair shot at success. As a “little guy,” I could not afford lawyers or accountants to help me through those critical starting years. For several years, I could not even afford to pay myself! In the years since I have achieved the American Dream – starting from nothing, building a successful business and a loving family, and now representing where I was born and bred in the United States C... Read more

In the more than thirty years I have practiced pharmacy, I have witnessed a tremendous evolution in the profession. The clinical foundation and training of a pharmacist graduating today is leaps and bounds above where I started my practice. However, one thing has not changed: a pharmacists’ role in patient care goes well beyond dispensing medications. Today, as before, many pharmacists provide patient-centered services like medication coordination, medication management, patient education, and m... Read more