>That Medicare spending needs to increase at a slower rate is
>incontrovertible. Otherwise the entire GDP would be health care.
>Absurd.
The only way Americans can beat back health care costs is to establish universal health care like normal rich nations.
John Lacny jlacny at earthlink.net, Sat Mar 6 21:51:18 PST 2004:
>means-tested
Speaking of Kerry & means-testing:
***** Voted YES on Medicare means-testing. Approval of means-based testing for Medicare insurance premiums. Status: Motion to Table Agreed to Y)70; N)20 Reference: Motion to table the Kennedy Amdt #440; Bill S. 947; vote number 1997-113 on Jun 24, 1997
Voted YES on medical savings accounts. Vote to block a plan which would allow tax-deductible medical savings accounts. Status: Amdt Agreed to Y)52; N)46; NV)2 Reference: Kassebaum Amdt #3677; Bill S. 1028; vote number 1996-72 on Apr 18, 1996
<http://www.issues2000.org/Social/John_Kerry_Health_Care.htm> *****
Max B. Sawicky sawicky at bellatlantic.net, Sat Mar 6 16:48:52 PST 2004:
>The Retirement Savings Accts are not the same as privatization of
>SS. RSAs were conceived as an add-on to SS, wherein people with low
>income would be given savings accounts, not incidentally with real
>banks instead of the pirates they use now to cash checks and the
>like. Explicit redistribution of wealth.
***** This unfunded partial privatization of Social Security will be supplemented by the creation of Retirement Savings Accounts (RSA), which will allow each worker to set aside up to $7,500 a year, tax-free, for his or her retirement. These RSAs will be joined by Lifetime Savings Accounts, permitting another $7,500 of tax-free investment to be used for any purpose, and Health Savings Accounts, which will similarly allow money set aside for medical expenses to go untaxed. Altogether, this superficially plausible "ownership society" initiative should allow individuals to meet the main needs (retirement, health, education) that are currently provided for by government programs.
Such tax-free savings accounts already exist under law. Yet more than 90 percent of Americans currently fail to make the maximum permissible contribution. The remaining 10 percent of very wealthy Americans who do use them will secure a minor windfall, but these are not the people who need government assistance.
<http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2004/01/yglesias-m-01-21.html> *****
John Lacny jlacny at earthlink.net, Sat Mar 6 21:51:18 PST 2004:
>in the midst of the impeachment fight.
The Clinton impeachment surely was a great boon to American workers -- who knows what other mischiefs Clinton might have caused without it:
***** Bill Clinton's liaison with Monica Lewinsky not only exploded into partisan warfare in Washington and impeachment by the House. It also probably blocked Social Security reform efforts.
"It's hard to rerun history," notes Jeffrey Frankel, who was a member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. Nevertheless, Mr. Frankel suspects that Clinton might have succeeded in reaching a deal with congressional Republicans that would have set up individual private accounts as part of a grand Social Security package.
"The stars were aligned briefly - until Monica came along," says Frankel, now at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
<http://search.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/08/06/p17s1.htm> *****
Douglas W. Elmendorf, Jeffrey B. Liebman, David W. Wilcox, NBER Working Paper No. w8488, "Fiscal Policy and Social Security Policy During the 1990s," September 2001, <http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8488>:
***** The Gramlich Commission struggled to reach consensus around a single plan, but eventually published a final report that reflected these three starkly different visions of Social Security reform. Ironically, the commission may have been considerably more valuable for not having reached consensus, because its analysis of these three alternatives served as a valuable launching pad for future analysis, including the work of Clinton administration staff. 18 It is also worth noting that, despite the divisions on the commission, the majority of members supported some sort of individual accounts as part of Social Security. Thus, the idea of individual accounts had, in a few short years, made a remarkable transition from the white papers of libertarian think tanks to the mainstream policy debate. *****
Even in the midst of impeachment, though, Clinton managed to propose a boondoggle:
***** Clinton proposed committing 60 percent of the budget surplus for the next 15 years -- an estimated $2.7 trillion -- to Social Security, investing a small portion in the private sector, just as any private or state government pension would do. "This will earn a higher return and keep Social Security sound for 55 years," he said.
("Clinton Ignores Impeachment, Calls for Social Security Reform," <http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/01/19/sotu.post/>) ***** -- Yoshie
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