Why did President Clinton's efforts to reform the financing of American health care fail? For years to come, politicians and scholars of public policy will revisit the debate over Clinton's health care plan. What did planners do right? And what did they do wrong? How can the mistakes of that experience be avoided in the future? What steps can now be taken to achieve some measure of reform in smaller pieces? In The Problem That Won't Go Away, economists, political scientists, sociologists, public opinion experts, and government staff offer answers to these and other crucial questions. They...

In the early 1960s America was in a confident mood and embarked on a series of efforts to solve the problems of poverty, racial discrimination, unemployment, and inequality of educational opportunity. The programs of the Great Society and the War on Poverty were undergirded by a broad consensus about what our problems as a nation were and how we should solve them. But by the early seventies both political and scholarly tides had shifted. Americans were divided and uncertain about what to do abroad, fearful of military inferiority, and pessimistic about the capacity of government to deal...

Many medical authorities predict that average life expectancy could well exceed 100 years by mid 21st century and rise even higher soon thereafter. This prospect, brought on by the revolution in molecular biology and information technology, confronts policymakers and public health officials with a host of new questions: how will increased longevity affect demographic trends, government taxation and spending, the workplace and health care? What ethical and quality-of-life issues are raised by these new breakthroughs?

Examines the effects of rising social security costs and of measures adopted to deal with them, and discusses possible ways of coping with the shortfall of available money for the aging American population.

Setting National Priorities continues the highly acclaimed and influential series of books that examine domestic and foreign policy choices confronting the United States.

The United States spends more on health care than any other nation in the world, yet millions of Americans cannot afford basic care for acute illnesses, few are insured against the costs of long-term care, and many frequently used medical procedures have never been fully evaluated. The goals of controlling spiraling health care costs and extending insurance coverage or even maintaining current insurance coverage seem to be in conflict. But progress can be made on both goals if they are tacked together. Henry Aaron evaluates these critical issues and explores how adequate care can be provided...

This work aims to examine social and domestic policy choices confronting the United States government. With governments facing large deficits and slowly growing revenues, and with public distrust in the efficiency of government at all-time highs, the authors focus on education and training, homelessness, crime, support for research and science, and investment in public works. They evaluate which current activities should be curtailed and which should be expanded, while providing estimates of the cost of doing so, and of the country's ability to pay.

The tax system profoundly affects countless aspects of private behavior. It is a powerful policy influence on the distribution of income and it is the one aspect of government that almost every citizen cannot avoid. With tax reform high on the political agenda, this book brings together studies of leading tax economists and lawyers to assess the various reform proposals and examine the effects of tax reform in several distinct areas. Together, these studies and comments on them present a balanced evaluation of professional opinion on the issues that will be critical in the tax reform debate....

Deciding when and how to retire are amongst the most important decisions people can make. But do they make sound decisions and plan with foresight? Standard economic analysis says yes: the essays in this volume raise serious doubts about such a comforting appraisal.