Posted on 10/18/2006 4:43:21 PM PDT by DredTennis
... Jacob Hacker, a Yale political science professor and author of The Great Risk Shift ... is a liberal who would dearly love to see Democrats offer the American public some big and bold proposals–something beyond raising the minimum wage and rolling back President Bush's tax cuts ... Here is Hacker's four-point agenda:
1) "Expand Medicare to move toward health security for all." Under Hacker's Medicare Plus plan, Medicare coverage would be available to all legal U.S. residents not covered by an employer-sponsored health plan.
2) "Move toward universal 401(k)'s." These savings plans would be available to all workers whether or not their employers offered retirement plans. All money would remain in the account throughout a person's working life even if he or she changed jobs. 3) "Upgrade unemployment insurance." A first step would be to expand a wage-loss insurance program–known as Trade Adjustment Assistance–created in 2002 to help older workers displaced by trade trends such as globalization and outsourcing. Hacker would bring in older workers displaced by structural changes in the economy and by trade. Under the current program, eligible workers age 50 or older who obtain new, full-time employment at wages of less than $50,000 may receive a wage subsidy of 50 percent of the difference between the old and new wages, up to $10,000 paid over a period of up to two years.
4) "Spearhead a pilot program to provide stop-loss protection against catastrophic income losses." This is Hacker's "universal insurance" idea, which would help preserve family incomes from huge drops, say, 20 percent or more or where out-of-pocket health costs in one year amounted to 20 percent or more of their combined income that year. The program would be most generous for lower-income families, which have the fewest resources with which to weather economic shocks.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
The Hillary Healthcare system like the socialist one is Canada is a farce. It divides the country into Super rich and poor and Super Rich get superior health care and the rest of us well lets just say I hope that test you need doesn't really cost that much because the government will determine if you ..... REALLY... need it...
Without refuting each suggestion for its glaring ignorance, it can be said that this "plan" is that of France. Far be it from the advocates of such stupidity to study the actual results, but they aren't good.
Universal 401(k) is not a bad proposal, but the benefits would be totally dwarfed by the damage from the rest of this cr@p.
You mean like the 87.5 BILLION dollar ANNUAL tax increase to pay for it? And what happens when more corporations move offshore, taking jobs with them? Then who will pay the taxes needed to sustain this boondoggle?
Prof. Hacker is a breath of fresh air:
An honest socialist!
This guy is nuts.
Yeah, let's not stop at tax increases. We all know how good high taxes are for the economy.
The honest socialists never figure out how the government will pay for all these things, as the costs climb upward. We already have entitlements we will not be able to pay for in the future. This country is living in Fool's Paradise.
They're (and IRAs) are already universal. It's just a matter of people educating themselves to utilize them or continue to spend and live for today.
Agreed. Giving the devil his due, universal 401-Ks are a good idea. Along with private accounts for Social Security...
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