Posted on 08/30/2009 9:34:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S health care plan is in trouble. If he really wants to accomplish reform, he might start by learning some lessons from the past. I witnessed firsthand President George W. Bush’s attempt, and unfortunate failure, to reform Social Security. Now, Mr. Obama is making similar mistakes in his effort to fix our health care system.
One of the most important lessons is that words matter — maybe too much. Mr. Bush allowed his unwavering emphasis on “personal accounts” to derail a compromise that could have helped solve the larger problem of restoring the fiscal sustainability of Social Security.
In his campaign for the presidency, George W. Bush rightly noted the low rates of return that would be available to younger workers. He proposed an alternative: Allow a portion of payroll taxes to be invested in personal savings accounts. The idea was that at least some of this money would be invested in the stock market, thus enabling households to earn a higher rate of return on their contribution than they would receive from traditional Social Security.
While many economists (including me) have supported personal accounts as a better way to pre-finance Social Security benefits than government investment in the private sector, personal accounts on their own do not offer higher, risk-adjusted returns. Much of Social Security’s projected lower returns to younger workers is a result of the high returns received by current retirees, who will continue to be paid. (Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, in which current taxes go principally to finance current benefits.) Furthermore, investing in stocks, which over long periods can yield more than bonds, for example, is no free lunch.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
yes, the stock idea with the promises of $$$$!!! wasn’t going to work. At least people should own *something* with lower risk bonds and cd’s instead of nothing with social security.
“A little bit pregnant” comes to mind.
The only time I’ve ever had trouble with the Market... DEMS were in the WhiteHouse.. or had majorities elsewhere.
Which is quite similar to SocialIST Security.. I’d still love to tell OBAMMY to “Gimmee the Money I’ve Paid in and I’ll take care of MYSELF!!
“Universal insurance coverage would enshrine the present inefficient system by increasing aggregate demand for, and thus the prices of, health care services. The increases in insurance costs for those already covered are estimated at 10 percent from this effort alone.”
yup. Liberals also think that if the govt was the sole insurer, costs would go down since there’s only one administrator. They point to medicare’s low admin costs. But medicare makes up for that cheap administration with an extremely high cost for waste fraud and abuse! Bureaucrats don’t have any incentive because they will keep their job and get more $ no matter what they do so they might as well take it easy.
I don’t have a problem with the market either but there are lots of people who don’t have any savings at all except what they are owed in SS. They have no wealth so they are very dependent on the govt.
This was supposed to be what the ownership society was supposed to fix except Bush turned it into the “borrow lots of $ to buy a house you can’t afford” society.
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