Charles Blahous, E21
My last article reviewed key lessons from the Social Security trustees’ annual report on that program’s financial status. This article presents four key lessons of the trustees’ companion report on the Medicare program. It is possible it is mere happenstance that the dismissal of the public trustee watchdogs from the process has coincided with the proliferation of proposals to expand both Social Security and Medicare far beyond what fiscal realism would allow. Nevertheless, the public policy discussion would benefit enormously from confirming public trustees to represent the bipartisan analytical consensus regarding Medicare (and Social Security) finances. Read more here....
via The Hoover Centennial
America Off Balance allows visitors to explore the current federal debt crisis and the complex reforms necessary to fix it.
Charles Blahous, E21
The Social Security trustees issued their annual report on the program’s financial condition earlier this year, along with their companion report on Medicare. As in previous years, these reports contain sobering news that lawmakers and the public need to know. The trustees who authored these reports are Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, and then-acting Social Security Commissioner Nancy Berryhill. Two other trustee positions, those of the independent, bipartisan public trustees, have remained vacant since Robert Reischauer and I last served in those capacities in 2015. This article summarizes four key lessons of the Social Security report. Read more here....
via Hoover Daily Report
With the first publication of Hoover Senior Fellow Joshua Rauh’s essay Hidden Debt, Hidden Deficits two years ago, there was finally a comprehensive look into the burden that state and local government pension promises to public employees are placing on public finances. Now, two years later, Rauh has revisited these fundamentally important questions regarding state and local pensions with a major data update and web resource that highlights the fiscal drag of unfunded pension obligations on state and local government finances.
mentioning John H. Cochrane via Forbes
Of all the things we might do to improve our health care system, the one reform that is more important than any other is almost never discussed. It is ignored by Republicans. By Democrats. By the experts. By the think tanks. And by just about everybody who has an opinion on health policy.
Alan D. Viard | Peter G. Peterson Foundation
In this video, Alan Viard explains how a fiscal policy proposal put forth by five AEI scholars would ensure long-run fiscal stability and maintain economic growth by slowing the growth of health care spending, simplifying the benefit formula for Social Security and encouraging saving to make the system more sustainable, and lowering tax rates while growing the base.