The House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer (R-TX) introduced legislation to provide for Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs). The legislation captures the fundamentals of MSAs, which offer Americans an opportunity to control rising health costs, to exercise freedom of choice and to determine how they will spend their health care dollars.
Federal budget experts across the political spectrum agree that the Medicare program is having a financial crisis. Without fundamental change, the future looks bleak. Medicare will go bankrupt by 2002. The necessary budget savings can be achieved while providing substantial benefits to the elderly by giving them greater control over Medicare funds, and their own health care.
ERISA has helped us move toward a national goal: the provision of affordable health insurance. It must remain intact – or be expanded so that even smaller employers can benefit. ERISA is the closest political compromise to having a "national" health plan without national control.
Employers around the country are now combining Medical Savings Accounts and managed care. Medical Savings Accounts are inconsistent with the traditional philosophy of HMOs. But efforts to make medicine cost-effective are natural allies of Medical Savings Accounts.
The goals of these block grants are laudable: transferring power back to the people and allowing local communities to find workable solutions to a welfare system that is a dismal failure. Yet serious questions remain. How much should go to each state? Should restrictions be attached? What promises should be made for future years?
Is there a way to simultaneously cut the spending and solve the problems of the Medicare program? Many health policy analysts believe the answer is Medical Savings Accounts.
Opponents of moving responsibility for school lunches to the states believe in centralized, big-government solutions. But they are going against the trend to devolve power to states, localities and the private sector, from which the most innovative solutions come.
From the harshness of tax policy debates in recent years, one might suppose that the tax burden had been shifted from the rich to the poor. In fact, major tax cuts in the 1980s did just the opposite. They shifted an increasing share of tax payments to the wealthiest taxpayers.
Congress can't balance the budget unless spiraling Medicaid costs are reined in, and an increasing number of people are convinced that the problems can't be solved in Washington. But can state governments succeed where the federal government has failed? Many are already trying by experimenting in new and innovative ways.
Six proposed tax cuts in the Contract With America are designed specifically to increase economic growth. Republicans claim that these tax reductions will lead to more jobs, higher wages and a higher living standard for all. Democratic critics claim that these tax changes are a giveaway to the rich that will have to be funded by higher tax burdens for everyone else.
In the U.S., we spend too much on hospital care and too little on drugs. Billions of dollars are wasted every year because patients and their doctors choose expensive, hospital-based therapies instead of more cost-effective drug therapies.
The new Congress should decentralize decisions on crime. It can do so by repealing both the entire Clinton Crime Control Act of 1994 and the Brady Gun Control Law. Then it should repeal the federal habeas corpus procedure, subsidies for death penalty appeal centers and the legal authority for state prisoners to pursue law suits willy nilly in federal courts.
The "takings clause" of the Fifth Amendment is unequivocal: "…nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." Unfortunately, this component of our Bill of Rights is regularly ignored by government – especially by environmental regulators who effectively condemn and take private property without paying for it.
Government is likely to work better when it is as close as possible to the governed. Thus, while national defense requires coordination by the central government, drainage ditch decisions do not. This principle of federalism can be expressed quite simply: The federal government's proper role is limited to carefully defined and constitutionally legitimate problems beyond the reach of the individual states.
Almost all business decisions involve some measures of costs versus benefits. Yet many governmental decisions are taken without adequate consideration of either. That is one reason the private sector is more efficient and productive than government.
The 42 million-plus Americans age 60 and over represent a vast store of human capital, rich in talent and ability. Yet this valuable resource is increasingly wasted. If elderly workers under the age of 70 want to improve their standard of living or continue using their work experience and skills, the government takes the bulk of their additional wages through special taxes.
Changes in tax rates affect how hard and long people work and how much they save and invest. But the official revenue-estimating arms of government ignore this fact in making their calculations. They assume that earnings and saving behaviors will stay exactly the same regardless of the tax rate.
Many married couples pay more taxes than they would if they were unmarried. This penalty can amount to several thousand dollars per year even for moderate-income families. President Clinton's tax increase in 1993 made the problem worse.
Social Security benefits were entirely free of taxes until 1983, when Congress voted to tax 50 percent of benefits above a certain income level. President Clinton raised this to 85 percent in 1993. The new Republican Congress has promised, as one of its first actions, to repeal the Clinton tax increase on Social Security recipients.
Public opinion polls show most people recognize that the current welfare system has utterly failed and are thoroughly disgusted with it. They would overwhelmingly support radical reform including spending reductions.
Is the public's mounting fear of crime justified? For the most part, the answer is yes. There are at least 10 things to know about crime in America today.
America already has over-politicized environmental issues. It would be inappropriate to divert even more resources to uncertain or nonexistent "problems." However, if the government assumes its proper role and explores property rights-based solutions to pollution, a decentralized, self-policing process can arise.
Our income tax system discriminates against long-term investments. Under current rules, investments in short-lived assets are more attractive than investments in long-lived assets. In fact, the longer the required depreciation period, the less attractive the asset is – especially during periods of inflation. The remedy for this problem is called "neutral cost recovery."
For the last several years, some critics of the American health care system have claimed that life expectancy is a good indicator of the quality of a country's health care system. If they are right, you should be indifferent about having your surgery in Cuba or in the United States because the two countries have the same life expectancy, 75.6 years.
The Veterans Administration runs the largest and least efficient hospital system in the country.