As the American Health Care Act works its way through Congress, much of the debate has recently focused on issues like health insurance regulation. While that debate reflects important issues, like protections for people with pre-existing conditions, there is another part that would arguably have even larger consequences: the proposed cuts and changes to Medicaid. The AHCA would fundamentally change the funding structure for the safety net program and could have wide ranging effects on millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid for their health care. Read on for an overview of what’s in store for the program that provides insurance to nearly 20 percent of the country.

Who is Affected

Medicaid is the largest health insurance program in the country, which combined with the related Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP), covered nearly 75 million people as of February. Medicaid covers a diverse group of people including low-income individuals and families, people with disabilities, and the elderly.

The video below explores what the Medicaid program is and how it is paid for:

To understand the scope of the proposed changes to Medicaid in the American Health Care Act, it’s important to look at how the bill it’s intended to repeal and replace–the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare–changed health insurance coverage in the first place. Generally speaking, the Affordable Care Act sought to increase insurance coverage by expanding the Medicaid program–through both increasing outreach and eligibility–while also creating regulated insurance marketplaces and providing subsidies to make health insurance more affordable.

The Medicaid expansion was directed at the lowest income Americans, specifically, people living below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, while insurance subsidies targeted those who were slightly better off but would still have difficulty paying for health insurance, namely those with incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level. Regulations also ensured that individuals could buy insurance on public exchanges and that prices couldn’t vary much according to an individual’s characteristics like age, sex, or health status, which was another way to expand coverage to those who were either priced out of the market or denied insurance outright.

While several components of the ACA sought to lower the rate of uninsured Americans, the Medicaid expansion played the largest role in achieving that goal. The AHCA includes important changes for insurance subsidies and regulation–the proposed cuts and changes to Medicaid are considerably larger. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the effects of the AHCA in March after it was initially introduced and found that overall, the law would reduce the number of people with health insurance by 24 million within 10 years. The biggest chunk of that decrease, 14 million, would come from the proposed changes to Medicaid. While the law would not technically take people’s insurance away from them–states would have to make difficult decisions about enrollment and eligibility–it would amount to a large cut in federal spending on the program. In total, the CBO estimates that the bill would lead to an $839 billion decrease in federal Medicaid spending over the next 10 years.

The AHCA includes two primary changes to Medicaid that would lead to a significant reduction in people enrolled in the program. First, the bill would phase out the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, decreasing the number of people that states would get a high percentage of federal matching funds to cover. Second, it would change the program’s funding model from an open-ended commitment to an amount per enrollee that gradually increases over time.

Ending the Medicaid Expansion

The Affordable Care Act offered states matching funds to insure a large number of people newly eligible for Medicaid. A 2012 Supreme Court decision made the Medicaid expansion optional at the state level, and since then, 31 states and the District of Columbia have chosen to take the federal funds. At first, the government would pay the full cost of insuring these newly eligible enrollees, but over time the government’s share would drop, and by 2020, it would cover 90 percent of the cost of coverage. The matching rate for the enrollees who gained coverage from the expansion is actually higher than the traditional matching rate that states have historically received for those who were already eligible.

The American Health Care Act plans to unwind the Medicaid expansion starting in 2020. While the plan will end up with an estimated 14 million fewer people on Medicaid relative to current law, the AHCA’s passage will not technically take health insurance away from these individuals. Instead, it grandfathers in all newly eligible enrollees who are already in the program by December 31, 2019–allowing states to continue to receive the 90 percent fund matching for those individuals. However, for people who sign up after that point, the funding would drop to regular matching levels. This means that states will likely decide to restrict their program’s eligibility and return to standards that were in place before the Affordable Care Act.

People on Medicaid tend to cycle in and out of the program relatively quickly, which means that even though the AHCA grandfathers in expansion enrollees, coverage numbers are expected to drop fairly quickly after 2020, when states get lower matching rates. The bill would also require people on Medicaid to re-enroll every six months, rather than every year under current law, to maintain their coverage. This requirement could make it easier for people to accidentally have a lapse in their coverage, which could make those who are grandfathered in unable to re-enter the program. Based on how quickly people have cycled out of the program in the past, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that two years after the expansion ends, fewer than a third of those who were grandfathered in will remain on Medicaid. By 2024, fewer than 5 percent will remain. While the federal government won’t technically take people’s insurance away from them, the drop in funding will likely force states to make the difficult decisions surrounding eligibility and enrollment.

It’s worth noting that politics are an important variable here, so estimating coverage changes can be more of an art than a science when the actions of state legislatures are involved. It’s likely that states will react to a decline in federal funding by reducing the number of people eligible for Medicaid benefits. They may even do so preemptively, as they know that their funding will soon be reduced. Generally, the law will sharply reduce federal funding for Medicaid, but changes will be determined at the state level as they start to shoulder more of the costs.

A New Funding Model

In addition to phasing out the Medicaid expansion, the AHCA intends to dramatically change the funding system for Medicaid. Currently, Medicaid operates as an entitlement program, meaning that the federal government has an open-ended commitment to pay for a large share of the program’s costs. This means that if more people enroll in the program, as is often the case during economic downturns, the federal government continues to bear much of the increase in costs. Similarly, if the cost of medical care increases significantly, as it has been for several decades, the federal commitment increases accordingly. The entitlement nature of Medicaid has been a target of Republicans for decades; however, this is the first attempt to restructure the program while Republicans maintain control of all three branches of government.

Under the AHCA’s per capita cap system, states will get a certain amount per person enrolled. Those amounts will vary based on the different groups eligible for Medicaid to avoid giving states an incentive to shift enrollment to lower costs. For example, the system is designed to prevent states from being pressured to drop enrollment for the elderly or disabled because they may cost more than children. Each year, the per capita cap will increase along with the changes in medical care services component of the Consumer Price Index, which tracks inflation. The medical services component is known as CPI-M. The per capita system will make funding responsive to enrollment changes, but if certain Medicaid costs outpace the overall cost growth for medical services, states will need to pay the additional amount. Generally speaking, shifting to a per person allotment will amount to a significant cut in overall Medicaid spending. The Congressional Budget Office anticipates that Medicaid costs will grow by 4.4 percent per year while CPI-M will grow at just 3.7 percent annually over the next 10 years.

Additionally, the amended AHCA allows states to opt for a block grant rather than a per person cap. This would give states a grant based on their Medicaid population and would give them a considerable amount of freedom in terms of how to use that funding. Proponents say that this would allow states to experiment with funds in order to find new ways to keep costs down and deploy spending more effectively. However, critics argue that a block grant could mean states could be forced to cover fewer people or services than under the per capita cap model, and considerably more so than the current law. This is because block grants would not respond to increases in eligibility, for example due to a recession, and like the per capita model, it would not respond to cost increases that result from new or more expensive types of care. States could charge enrollees more for their care and they could cap enrollment, which could mean even those who are eligible may not be able to join the program.

How it would Change Medicaid

To illustrate how different the system would be under a per capita cap, economists at the Kaiser Family Foundation ran the numbers for Medicaid outlays from 2001 to 2011 to see how tying funds to CPI-M would affect spending. The KFF finds that federal spending would have been $195 billion below actual spending during that period, which would amount to a drop of about 7 percent. Importantly, these changes have very different consequences for the costs involved in covering the different eligible groups in the Medicaid program. For example, spending tied to CPI-M would have been 6 percent lower than actual spending when it comes to the health care costs for the disabled, but it would have been 15 percent lower for children on the program. In both of these cases, states would have had to shoulder more of the costs, but the difference is considerably larger due to faster growth in child health care costs. There is also a lot of variation between states in terms of what they pay for the average Medicaid enrollee. In fact, spending varies so much per person, that 13 states would have actually seen an increase or no change in their overall funding if it was anchored to CPI-M. However, 37 states and the District of Columbia would have seen their funding drop. And for 26 of those states, the drop relative to existing law would have been larger than 10 percent.

Subsequent amendments to the AHCA–after the initial Congressional Budget Office analysis–increased the per capita spending for the blind, elderly, and disabled to CPI-M plus one percentage point. Those changes amount to an estimated $41 billion in additional spending over the next 10 years, according to revised CBO projections. While $41 billion is a significant increase it may not be in the scope of the overall cuts–instead of reducing Medicaid spending by $880 billion, the amended law is projected to drop spending by $839 billion. While the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates mentioned above are based on CPI-M, and AHCA increases that rate slightly for certain populations, its calculations remain instructive.

Critics of the plan argue that the proposed per capita spending caps would limit states’ ability to respond to changes and could leave them on the hook for a lot of spending if certain costs grow faster than overall medical inflation. And because these caps will effectively result in spending cuts relative to the current law, it will ultimately leave states with less funding while also reducing their responsiveness to cost changes. An example of where this could be a problem is in Medicaid’s role in addressing the opioid epidemic. Many people who joined the program after the Medicaid expansion were previously uninsured and did not have access to addiction treatment. Moreover, the entitlement nature of the program allowed the program to respond to costs related to the epidemic. This is important given the program’s role in treatment–in total, Medicaid and CHIP, the related health insurance program for children, cover thirty percent of the U.S. population dealing with opioid addiction.

Conclusion

The American Health Care Act includes a number of adjustments to the current health care system, but the most wide-ranging might be the proposed cuts and changes to the Medicaid program. President Obama’s health law led to a large increase in Medicaid enrollment and the AHCA would roll much of that back while going even further to change the funding structure of the entire program. Taken together these changes amount to an $839 billion spending cut over the next 10 years and 14 million fewer people with health insurance.

Advocates of the bill argue that it will rein in Medicaid spending levels to a more sustainable course while granting states the ability to experiment and cut costs. Critics argue that it will dramatically increase the number of people without insurance by reducing federal funding for Medicaid while not offering alternatives to those who can’t afford insurance. As Senate Republicans begin to work on their own version of the health care bill, these wide ranging changes to Medicaid will likely be an important part of the debate.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Hello, Monday! If you’re on the East Coast like me it’s foggy and bleak out there, and the news about the Russian hackers is enough to make anyone want to crawl back into bed. But our last story for today is hopefully enough to cheer you up, so read on and have a good start to your week! Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

Trump Doesn’t Believe that Russia Tried to Influence the Election

On Saturday, the CIA concluded that many Democrats’ suspicions were true: Russian authorities did attempt to influence the U.S. election. More specifically, they wanted to help Donald Trump win. Several U.S. intelligence agencies found that the Kremlin provided Wikileaks with thousands of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton and the DNC. And when Wikileaks published them online, the negative media attention helped propel Trump to victory.

Don’t let Trumps twitter rants distract from the real news: THE RUSSIANS INTERVENED IN OUR ELECTION TO HELP TRUMP WIN. #russianhacking

— Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) December 10, 2016

But on Sunday, Trump said that he simply didn’t believe the news and that the Democrats are just angry because he won. His team also called his victory “one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history,” when in fact, it was one of the closest elections ever.

Also on Sunday, Trump said he would not be getting the daily intelligence briefing that most presidents receive just, you know, to keep track of the world. But Trump doesn’t love the briefings–in fact, he thinks they’re too repetitive. “You know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years,” he said.

Even some Republicans are shocked:

So wait…the CIA says Russia messed with our election to help Trump win and Trump attacks…the CIA?

Not Russia? He goes after the CIA?

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) December 10, 2016

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: December 12, 2016 appeared first on Law Street.

Studying life expectancy allows us to understand what factors help people live longer and how changes in conditions affect people’s lives. Recent research shows how life expectancy varies among different groups of Americans, sparking some important questions about future policy decisions. While life expectancy has increased overall over the past several decades, those gains tend to vary widely among certain groups. This research has implications on a range of issues from public health and inequality to Social Security. 

Read on to find out more about the current U.S. life expectancy, how it has changed over time, and how American lifespans compare to those of people in other countries, particularly other advanced nations.

How long do People Live?

The most common way to measure how long people live on average is through life expectancy, which is the amount of time in years a newborn baby is likely to live based on current conditions and health trends. The average life expectancy at birth for Americans as of 2014 was 79.68 years, meaning a child born in 2014 in the United States could be expected to live to that age. While this provides a baseline, the numbers can be further divided among a variety of demographics, which tell a more in-depth story.

Life expectancies tend to vary among different groups, particularly when categorized by race, sex, and income levels. In the case of race, there is a wide disparity between black and white Americans. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in 2009 found that the average life expectancy for black Americans was 75 years old, which was the same as it was for white Americans back in 1979. According to the CDC, the reasons for this disparity are higher rates of cancer, diabetes, homicide, heart disease, and perinatal conditions. Racial disparities are considerably larger when you further divide by education. Some of the largest gaps in life expectancy exist between white Americans with more than 16 years of education and black Americans with fewer than 12. One dynamic keeping this gap from becoming even larger is the much higher rate of suicide for whites.

Sex also plays a role in how long the average person can expect to live. In 2012, the average life expectancy for a male in the United States was 76.4 years and 81.2 years for women. This gap is not uncommon, however, as women tend to live longer than men for a number of reasons. One such reason is that women generally engage in less risky behavior and suffer fewer car accidents. These numbers hold even though more baby boys are actually born than baby girls, although that is mostly the result of female embryos having slightly higher rates of miscarriage than male embryos.

A third major factor that relates to life expectancy is income. In a recent study based on data from 2001 to 2014, researchers found that the average life expectancy for the richest men in the United States is approximately 87 years, which is about 15 years longer than the poorest. To put that in a clearer context, rich men in the United States live longer than men in any other country, while poor men live, on average, the same number of years as men in countries like Sudan and Pakistan. The numbers are similar among wealthy women who have an average life expectancy of 89 years old, 10 years longer than women in the lowest income group. Although researchers have not drawn a causal line between life expectancy and income to explain what drives this gap, a clear correlation exists between the two.

The accompanying video summarizes the study’s findings:

The numbers can also be parsed further. Although the rates for the richest men and women vary little depending upon the geographical area, the same is not true for the poor. On average, low-income people live shorter lives in the middle of the country compared to those who live in rich coastal cities. The study’s authors note that most of the geographical differences may be behavior-related and potentially explained by factors like rates of smoking and obesity. They also note that in wealthy cities with high levels of education and public spending, those at the bottom of the income scale tend to live longer than their counterparts in less affluent cities.

Changes in Life Expectancy

Life expectancy in the United States has changed dramatically over time. For example, in the 1930s, when Social Security was first introduced, the average man only lived to be 58 years old and the average woman 62 years old. Ironically, the retirement age for Social Security was set at 65. Another important consequence of the gap in life expectancy for the rich and poor is its effect on economic inequality and Social Security. As wealthy people live longer, they also receive more in Social Security benefits because they get additional payments over the course of their lives. Depending on how large the gap is, wealthy people may end up taking out a larger share of what they contributed relative to their income, which could reduce the progressivity of the Social Security program. This gap also has important consequences for the debate about retirement age, which many argue is necessary to keep the program funded as baby boomers retire.

While life expectancy has changed a lot over the past several decades, it has affected different groups in distinct ways. The clearest explanation comes in the same three characteristics mentioned earlier: sex, race, and income. In this instance, sex and race tend to blend together. Traditionally, white women have lived the longest, however, a recent study found that life expectancy for white women actually went down by a month. While this group still lives longest by far, the number has shrunk slightly due to a combination of factors, including rising suicide, drug overdose, and liver disease often caused by alcoholism. While white people, in general, suffer from these problems more than other groups, women have been particularly susceptible. This dip in life expectancy is actually the first one since totals have been calculated and happens at a time when other health concerns such as strokes and heart disease are causing fewer deaths.

The video below looks at this unexpected change:

While white women saw a reduction in life expectancy, several other groups saw an increase. Namely, black males and Hispanics of both sexes are expected to live longer. The third group, made up of white males and black females, saw no change in their life expectancy. Aside from sex and race, income level’s influence on life expectancy also changed. In the case of income, the richest people in America have gained three years in life expectancy from 2001-2014, while life expectancy for the poorest Americans did not change.

The United States Compared to the Rest of the World

Reliable data for life expectancy covers a relatively short time in history. In fact, for the United Kingdom, the country with the farthest reaching information, rates only go back to the 191h century. In the U.K., and virtually every other country, life expectancy was very short in the early 1800s, averaging between 30 and 40 years old; in South Korea and India, it was as low as 23. However, as healthcare and science improved, especially regarding infant mortality, life expectancy rose dramatically across the globe around the beginning of the 20th century.

This rapid improvement occurred in the United States as well, but the U.S. average of 79.68 years currently ranks 43rd relative to the rest of the world. Although countries with longer life expectancies may not be as large and diverse as the United States, it is important to ask why–for such a rich country–the U.S. life expectancy is relatively low, particularly compared to other developed nations.

The answer, according to the CDC, is threefold: drug overdose, gun violence, and car crashes. These three categories lead to injuries that account for roughly half of the deaths for men and a fifth for women in the United States. Americans, on average, live two years fewer than people in similarly developed countries. The effects of these, particularly drug overdoses, have been most acutely felt among middle-aged white Americans. Another important factor that contributes to America’s lower life expectancy is smoking tobacco. Many people in the United States started smoking earlier and in larger numbers than in other places.

Another major factor affecting life expectancy and keeping the United States behind other developed countries is the infant mortality rate. The infant mortality rate “compares the number of deaths of infants under one-year-old in a given year per 1,000 live births in the same year.” The infant mortality rate for the United States is 5.87. Although that is historically low, it is less impressive compared to other countries–the United States has the 167th highest rate out of 224 countries, and is a far cry from most other developed nations that average between two and four. Like life expectancy in general, infant mortality rates are also affected by things such as race and income with more affluent and white babies at a much lower risk of death than lower-income and black babies.

Conclusion

There is no conclusive way to say exactly how long a person will live, but life expectancy provides an effective measure to see how certain factors contribute to longevity. In the United States, these numbers have been broken down further to take into account the differences across a wide range of demographics. In general, the most recent data was positive, with groups either staying where they are or seeing life expectancy gains, except for a few cases. However, even these modest gains still leave the United States behind many other developed nations. The reasons for this shortcoming are manifold, ranging from high infant mortality rates to smoking tobacco. Regardless of the results, though, life expectancy can provide people with a good baseline for how long they might live and what factors contribute to longevity.

Resources

The World Bank: Life Expectancy at Birth

Infoplease: Life Expectancy for Countries, 2015

The Journal of the American Medical Association: The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014

Social Security Administration: Life Expectancy for Social Security

The Washington Post: The Stunning–and Expanding–Gap in Life Expectancy Between the Rich and Poor

CNN: White Women’s Life Expectancy Shrinks a Bit

NPR: Life Expectancy Drops For White Women, Increases For Black Men

CNN: Why Americans Don’t Live as Long as Europeans

Population Reference Bureau: Smoking-Related Deaths Keep U.S. Life Expectancy Below Other wealthy Countries

Central Intelligence Agency: World Factbook

Our World in Data: Life Expectancy

USA Today: Life Expectancy in the USA Hits a Record High

Population Education: Why Are More Baby Boys Born Than Girls

USA Today: Infant Mortality Rates hits Record Low, Although Racial Disparities Persist

Business Insider: Huge Racial Gap in Life Expectancy

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What Explains Life Expectancy in the United States? appeared first on Law Street.

The Social Security program was enacted in 1935 to provide post-retirement income security for workers and their families. Since then, it has grown to become the world’s largest government program with a total expenditure of $768 billion in fiscal year 2012. Americans are seriously concerned about the sustainability of Social Security, which has led to questions about whether privatizing the system could be wise. Read on to learn about Social Security privatization efforts, and the arguments for and against such a move.

The Current Status of Social Security

Social Security isn’t in great shape right now. Various reports have estimated different dates at which the entitlement program may have difficulty paying out full benefits to those who should receive them, but the current most cited year is 2033. One of the big reasons for why Social Security is in big trouble is because of our changing demographics and health statistics. When Social Security was first introduced pre-World War II, people did not live nearly as long as they do today. In addition, the post-World War II Baby Boom led to a glut in our population size. Social Security’s forecasting methods weren’t able to accurately predict the situation we’re in now, where there are many healthy people retiring who will live longer than ever before. To put this into context, in 1960, there were about 5.1 workers paying into the system for every retiree; now the ratio has shifted to under 3:1.

What does “privatizing” Social Security mean?

Given Social Security’s current state, there have been solutions suggested to try to fix it. One of the most popular is privatizing the system. That would most likely mean creating individual private accounts for the workers. Those private accounts will be subject to more control by those who are paying in, and would be able to interact with the private market. The funds could be invested in things like private stocks, which advocates point out would boost workers’ rate of return.

The proposition of its privatization came into the limelight when George W. Bush proposed the Growing Real Ownership of Workers Act of 2005. The bill aimed at replacing the mandatory payouts from workers’ checks with voluntary personal retirement accounts. In 2010, Paul Ryan, a major supporter of privatization, attempted unsuccessfully to reignite interest in the idea in his Roadmap for America’s Future budget plan.

What are the arguments for privatization?

Proponents of privatization argue that the current program significantly burdens fiscal debt and will lead to increased debt and taxes for future generations. They claim that privatizing it will keep the program from collapsing in the future. It would actually lead to higher post-retirement earnings for workers or, at the very least, keep earnings at a relatively stable rate. Additionally, it would empower workers to be responsible for their own future.

Advocates for privatizing social security also point out that in the past, funds in Social Security have been diverted to pay for other things the government has needed to pay for, and then replaced in time. If Social Security was privatized into individual accounts, the government wouldn’t be able to take such actions. According those who want to privatize Social Security, doing so would also help minimize the bureaucracy involved in the process.

Case Study: Chile

Chile’s post-privatization success is used as an example that the United States can learn from. Chile transferred to a new program in which  workers put 10-20 percent of their incomes into private pension funds. When the worker retires, an insurance company gets involved to help with the dispensation of money, but even at that step the Chilean worker has a lot of choice and flexibility. Although long term effects of the plan have yet to be discovered, the short term effects are positive.

What’s the argument against privatizing the Social Security system?

Opponents worry that privatizing social security will lead to risk and instability in post-retirement earnings and cause significant reductions in the same. They argue that privatization can also potentially place minorities at a disadvantage, as well as anyone who doesn’t have the time, knowledge, or desire to effectively manage their account. Many also claim that the media has exaggerated the program’s financial demise and that its balance is currently in surplus with most Baby Boomers currently in the workforce.

Those who argue against Social Security privatization have also expressed concern about the financial and logistical resources that would be needed to start a privatized Social Security program. They also believe that a move toward privatization would create more, not less bureaucracy, because of the complexity of private markets. Several groups and individuals, such as the Center for American Progress and economist Robert Barro oppose the idea.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that Social Security is currently struggling, and if something is not done, it will continue only get worse. There’s no easy answer, but privatization is one frequently suggested option in the public debate. Exactly how privatization would occur, what its benefits and downsides would be, and its overall effectiveness are still up for debate, but for now it’s definitely an idea that we can expect to see on the list of possible solutions for the foreseeable future.

Resources

Primary 

Social Security Administration: A Program and Policy History

Social Security Administration: The Social Security Act of 1935

Social Security Administration: Fast Facts & Figures About Social Security, 2012

Social Security Administration: The 2013 Annual Report of the Broad of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds

Social Security Association: Privatizing Social Security: The Chilean Experience

Additional 

Daily Signal: Social Security’s Unfunded Obligation Rises by $1 Trillion

CATO: Still a Better Deal: Private Investment vs. Social Security

Safe Haven: Privatize Social Security Before I Spend Your Pension

Sun Sentinal: Privatization Would Help But Liberals Resist Changes

Independent: Privatizing Social Security the Right Way

Freedom Works: Chilean Model of Social Security

NCPSSM: The Truth About Privatization and Social Security

Economic Policy Institute Report: Saving Social Security With Stocks: The Promises Don’t Add Up

Fortune: Privatizing Social Security: Still a Dumb Idea

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: What the 2013 Trustees’ Report Shows About Social Security

CATO: Speaking the Truth About Social Security Reform

AARP: In Brief: Social Security Privatization Around the World

National Bureau of Economic Research: Social Security Privatization: A Structure for Analysis

NEA: Social Security Privatization: A Bad Deal for Women

Salome Vakharia

Salome Vakharia is a Mumbai native who now calls New York and New Jersey her home. She attended New York School of Law, and she is a founding member of Law Street Media. Contact Salome at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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