Support is growing for a proposed solution to the rising number of uninsured Americans: a health insurance tax credit. If properly designed and implemented, a tax credit would allow uninsured, low income individuals and families to purchase affordable, quality health insurance.
While the idealists among us still hope for a major overhaul of our health care system, there are some minor reforms lawmakers could enact that would pay big dividends. Here are 10 suggestions along with the Web addresses of NCPA publications that discuss them in greater detail.
As the year ends, hundreds of thousands of American workers are scrambling to spend down their flexible spending accounts (FSAs). Some buy designer eyeglasses. Others schedule a last minute appointment for teeth cleaning. Some plan a doctor visit or diagnostic test of questionable value. In almost all cases, this year-end spending goes for items and services that are probably worth less than their cost.
As the baby boomers near retirement, defects in the nation's private pension system are becoming obvious. Only about half of workers contribute to an employer-sponsored pension plan in any given year, and Individual Retirement Account (IRA) participation rates are substantially lower. Among workers with tax-preferred retirement saving plans, few make the maximum allowable contribution. And despite the many private savings incentives, many households approach retirement with meager funds.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Proponents hoped that it would help the world avoid catastrophe caused by human induced climate change. However, Kyoto faced long odds of ever coming into effect in the United States.
The start of another flu season has found Americans facing a shortage of influenza vaccine. Although nearly 60 million flu shots will be available, vaccination is recommended for 185 million people at risk for complications. In a typical year, less than one-third of the U.S. population receives flu shots. Fortunately, since influenza is a contagious disease, it is not necessary to vaccinate everyone in order to stop widespread epidemics, or even to limit vaccinations only to those who are at risk. However, when there is a shortage, many people will seek the vaccine who might not otherwise have bothered.
Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) energy plan promises to reduce energy prices, maintain diversity of supply while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improve our domestic energy security. However, his goals are contradictory and implementation will be expensive. Ultimately, Kerry's energy policy is a hopeless muddle, and would result in less energy security and higher fuel costs.
On May 1, 2004, the European Union absorbed 10 new members, comprising 250,000 square miles, 80 million citizens and $444 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) – the largest expansion in territory, population and wealth ever achieved by a government in peacetime.
Social Security and Medicare are making future promises much greater than the taxes that will be collected at current rates. Unfortunately, some policymakers seem to be intent on making the problem worse, not better. Reforms are needed that create more saving today for retirement and increase the nation's capital stock.
Sen. John Kerry has proposed a plan to radically transform the U.S. health care system. The plan has one overriding goal: to reduce the number of the uninsured. Yet roughly two-thirds of the spending under the plan is devoted to subsidizing the cost of health insurance for those who already have coverage. As a result, the plan is very expensive in terms of what it attempts to achieve.
Sen. John Kerry has a plan to radically change the U.S. health care system. If he is successful, millions of middle-income families will be enrolled in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor. Millions more will get their insurance through a system of managed competition modeled after the federal employee's health system and similar to what Hillary Clinton proposed more than a decade ago. Most people would not be able to continue in the private health plans they have today.
A key element of the John Kerry-John Edwards campaign is an us-versus-them theme – where "us" are the poor and middle class and "them" are the greedy rich -famously characterized by Edwards as "Two Americas." The Democrats' message clearly implies that the rest of us would somehow be better off if the rich were worse off.
In the history of the U.S. presidential elections, there has never been a clearer contrast between the candidates with respect to health care policy. President Bush and Sen. Kerry have endorsed sharply different visions of how to reform the American health care system and both have put forth specific proposals to implement those visions.
In the past quarter-century environmentalists rediscovered the old adage, “better safe than sorry,” repackaged it as the “precautionary principle,” and with the aid of their allies in European governments, succeeded in incorporating it into several multilateral environmental agreements. Several versions of the principle are now ensconced in the Rio Declaration of 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, among others.
Despite claims that the United States is experiencing a health insurance crisis, the proportion of Americans without health coverage has changed little in the past decade.
One of America's largest publicly owned corporations recently announced the biggest stock dividend payment in history: some $37 billion. Tens of thousands of workers and retirees will benefit from Microsoft's decision to distribute some of its profits to shareholders, as well as millions of 401(k) participants whose mutual funds invest in high-tech stocks. In the past year, other companies have paid dividends for the first time, including Target, Bank of America and Proctor & Gamble. Previously, these companies reinvested profits themselves, and shareholders only realized a gain when they sold their stocks.
To the 10.5 million students in college each year and their families, college affordability is a major concern. With annual regularity, news headlines warn about rising college costs. Tuition at four-year public universities, for example, jumped an average of 14.1 percent last year. But is college truly less affordable today? Thanks to an explosion in federal grants, state aid and tax credits, the average student pays less than ever for a public university education.
As of January 2004, 250 million non-elderly Americans have access in principle to health savings accounts (HSAs). Individuals will now be able to self-insure for some of their own medical needs and manage some of their own health care dollars.
Though the pace of U.S. job creation has quickened recently, some "Benedict Arnold" companies are still being criticized for outsourcing work from the United States to other countries. U.S. manufacturers have outsourced operations to countries such as China to lower wage costs and escape from high taxes, burdensome government regulations and intransigent unions at home. For similar reasons, service jobs in information technology (IT) are outsourced to India. Less well known, though, is that increased economic globalization has caused jobs to move to the United States as well as away from it. And because of the higher, increasing productivity of American workers, the jobs that move here pay more than the ones that leave.
Last year, as Congress debated what would become the Medicare Modernization Act (P.L. 108-173), the media and most policymakers focused on the elephant in the room – major changes being made to the Medicare program affecting over 40 million senior citizens. But a "mighty mouse" occupied the same room, and went largely unnoticed. The law also created "Health Savings Accounts" (HSAs), allowing individuals who purchase high-deductible insurance policies to establish tax-free savings accounts for health care expenses. Early data has surprised critics by showing that HSAs are encouraging many Americans to obtain health insurance and save for their futures. Most importantly, many of the new HSA owners were formerly uninsured, defying initial prophecies that the accounts would only be utilized by the "young, healthy and wealthy."
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that human activities are responsible for nearly all earth's recorded warming during the past two centuries. A widely circulated image used by the IPCC dramatically depicting these temperature trends resembles a hockey stick with three distinct parts: a flat "shaft" extending from A.D. 1000 to 1900, a "blade" shooting up from A.D. 1900 to 2000, and a range of uncertainty in temperature estimates that envelops the shaft like a "sheath."
In the 2004 Budget, President Bush proposed to simplify and expand saving incentives. Instead of choosing from among a bewildering array of narrowly focused accounts, individuals would be able to save much larger amounts in a Lifetime Savings Account usable for any purpose and a Retirement Savings Account designed for retirement. His proposals will stimulate broader debates over tax reform and Social Security reform.
The 2004 annual reports for Social Security and Medicare examine the short- and long-term health of these programs, and highlight the financial burdens they will create for future generations. If not reformed in a timely and responsible way, Social Security and Medicare will consume an ever-increasing portion of workers' incomes or the government must break its promises to future retirees.
Europe is a great place to visit – but don't try to find a job there. Unemployment averaged 8.8 percent in Europe last year, compared to 6.1 percent in the United States. [See Figure I.] Americans have been disappointed with a weak labor market in the last few years, but put this into perspective: Over the last 12 years, America's worst unemployment rate was better than Europe's best unemployment rate.
Congress responded to the August 2003 northeastern electrical blackout by revising provisions of the comprehensive energy legislation with which it and the Administration had been grappling for two years. A portion of the bill focuses on improving electric power reliability and increasing competition. The comprehensive bill has been stalled in the Senate since December 2003; thus, there has been virtually no progress on reliability since the blackout. However, the energy bill provisions regarding siting authority for transmission lines, private nonutility investment in new lines, and repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) hold some hope of improving reliability.