For most of the last two decades, Republicans insisted they wanted to reform the federal entitlement programs to avert a painful fiscal crunch.
Entitlement spending growth is concentrated in three very large programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The sad irony of Medicaid is that its costs are so high that many states are struggling to finance their programs, even as the beneficiaries who rely on the program are too often underserved and provided with an unacceptably low quality of care.
It would work a lot like today's Medicare Advantage program, which a third of seniors already choose over the fee-for-service program, but would enable competition among insurance providers and the traditional program to more directly restrain program spending.
The common thread linking these approaches to the largest entitlement programs is a desire to distinguish means from ends so that the misguided designs of our entitlements today are not confused with their appropriate goals.
By thinking through the goals while understanding the immense fiscal pressures these programs create, we might see our way to an entitlement system that could be made sustainable in 21st-century America, could particularly help those who need it most while providing a baseline of support for the elderly in general, and could avoid undermining the country's capacity for growth and prosperity.
These are, to be sure, only the outlines of reforms to our major entitlement programs.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/yuval-levin/the-entitlement-crisis-is-real-and-its-worse-than-you-think
Entitlement spending growth is concentrated in three very large programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The sad irony of Medicaid is that its costs are so high that many states are struggling to finance their programs, even as the beneficiaries who rely on the program are too often underserved and provided with an unacceptably low quality of care.
It would work a lot like today's Medicare Advantage program, which a third of seniors already choose over the fee-for-service program, but would enable competition among insurance providers and the traditional program to more directly restrain program spending.
The common thread linking these approaches to the largest entitlement programs is a desire to distinguish means from ends so that the misguided designs of our entitlements today are not confused with their appropriate goals.
By thinking through the goals while understanding the immense fiscal pressures these programs create, we might see our way to an entitlement system that could be made sustainable in 21st-century America, could particularly help those who need it most while providing a baseline of support for the elderly in general, and could avoid undermining the country's capacity for growth and prosperity.
These are, to be sure, only the outlines of reforms to our major entitlement programs.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/yuval-levin/the-entitlement-crisis-is-real-and-its-worse-than-you-think
No comments:
Post a Comment