On Sat, 17 Aug 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Probably someone from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, but I
> don't remember who.
That's it: Heidi Hartmann, President of the IWPR. You interviewed her on March 16, 2000, on the same show as Greg Nowell on the politics of Caucasian oil (which I just happened to save because your studio copy got botched and Greg wanted a copy).
In their discussion of SS privatization at the IWPR website, they just mention disability and life insurance in passing to say that they are benefits now serving millions of Americans under the current Social Security set-up, and that the case against privatization would be even worse if one factored back in the cost of purchasing life and disability insurance for the people affected -- which the privatizers never do, and which implies at least rhetorically that they don't care if these services get entirely cut.
BTW, people interested in the SS privatization issue in general might want to have a look at their SS privatization calculator, which purports to calculate how much you would get under the current system and how much you would get under privatization, which is almost always a lot less. They seem to do good job of explaining their assumptions, and it might be just the thing for people involved in retirement newsgroup debates. Although I have to warn that I haven't combed through their assumptions myself and I don't know how far they stand up.
http://www.iwpr.org/sscalc4/calculator.html
Michael