The Future of Social Insurance: Incremental Action or Fundamental Reform?

In this new conference volume from the National Academy of Social Insurance, experts offer differing views on what changes will, and must, occur to ensure the continuing viability of Social Security, retirement benefits, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and health security programs. The book opens with a general overview of how economic and political forces will shape the future of social insurance. In the chapters that follow, contributors discuss and debate a full range of related topics, including future Social Security investment returns, the changing face of private retirement plans, insuring longevity risk in pensions and Social Security, issues in unemployment insurance, long-term financing, governance, and markets for Medicare, and health care for the underserved and uninsured. Contributors include William C. Dudley (Goldman Sachs), Richard Berner (Morgan Stanley Dean Witter), Kilolo Kijakazi (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), Fay Lomax Cook (Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University), Lawrence Jacobs (University of Minnesota), Jack VanDerhei (Fox School of Business Management, Temple University) Craig Copeland (Employee Benefit Research Institute), Jeffery R. Brown (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard), Janet Norwood (1993-96 Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation), Marilyn Moon (Urban Institute), Sheila Burke (Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard), Mark Schlesinger (Yale), Gerard Anderson (Johns Hopkins University), Lauren LeRoy (Grantmakers in Health), Ruth Riedel (Alliance Healthcare Foundation of San Diego), and Henrie M. Treadwell (W. K. Kellog Foundation¡¯s Community Voices).

Peter Edelman is professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Dallas L. Salisbury is president of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Pamela J. Larson is executive vice president of the National Academy of Social Insurance.