Putting Our House in Order: A Guide to Social Security and Health Care Reform
by By Shultz, George P., Shoven, John B., Gunn, Matthew, and Goda, Gopi Shah
Category: Medical , Health Policy

Shultz (a former US Secretary of State, Secretary of Labor, and Secretary of the Treasury) and Shoven (director, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research) warn that the so-called entitlement programs--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--"are out of control and will overwhelm the budget" and propose their own fixes "developed to meet the tests of fairness and fiscal responsibility" in addition to reviewing other proposals. For Social Security they lean towards progressive price indexing and personal security accounts. For health care they propose a range of initiatives, including the encouragement of national markets in health insurance, making company-sponsored health savings accounts portable across employers, making tax-advantaged health savings accounts and relatively low-cost catastrophic insurance available to all without employer-sponsored plans, and offering consumer choice within Medicare and Medicaid. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)