Categories
Interested in posting to the 'Discuss' section?
Are you a Member interested in posting to Discuss? Please send a draft of your post to MemberServices@nasi.org, and a staff member will get back to you promptly with next steps. Commenting on Discuss posts is open to the general public.
Terms and Conditions
All content expressed in the “Discuss” section of the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) website are those of the author or authors and do not reflect the opinion of Academy staff or Board of Directors. The Academy reserves the right to edit or delete any comments deemed offensive or disrespectful.
Thinking about Retirement?
Social Security: Americans Agree VIDEO
.jpg)
Have you seen “Social Security: Americans Agree?” Click here to learn more.
Social Security: Just the Facts Video
Have you seen, “Social Security: Just the Facts?” Click here to learn more.
COVERED: a week-by-week look at the political and legislative developments that led to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid 50 years ago. Bob Rosenblatt, Academy senior fellow and former Los Angeles Times Washington correspondent will report on the people and the maneuvers that led to this major expansion of social insurance.
Discuss: Share in our Policy Ideas
In Memoriam: Thomas Golden & Michael Wiseman
We recently learned of the passing of two Academy Members: Thomas Golden and Michael Wiseman.
In Memoriam: Phil Lee
Academy Founding Member Dr. Philip R. Lee passed away last month. The New York Times obituary described him aptly as “a fighter for social justice.”
As Phil wrote in the summer 2015 issue of Generations, the journal of the American Society on Aging: “Medicare was my entrée into a long and exciting career in health policy. The efforts I was involved in to advocate for, implement, and refine the program had a profound impact on me.” He noted that, as a proponent of universal health care legislation in the 1960s, he was “repeatedly accused of being a socialist.”
Read More…A Triple Play: New Academy Task Forces
.png)
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare major weaknesses and gaps in our existing social insurance ecosystem.
The National Academy of Social Insurance is responding with the launch of three new Task Forces to examine critical social insurance issues over the next year.
- The first will be an will be an interdisciplinary task force on how the crises driven by COVID-19 interact with social insurance programs.
- The second will explore potential large-scale reforms to the Unemployment Insurance system.
- The third will explore options to improve retirement security for older workers who are in physically demanding jobs.
Read More…
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Social Security
Among Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s many legal accomplishments was her role in successfully challenging gender discrimination in the Social Security Act.
In 1974, as a law professor at Columbia University and founder of The Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, she filed suit against Caspar Weinberger, then Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, on the basis that Social Security’s treatment of surviving spouses violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
At issue was the Social Security Act’s provision of surviving spouse benefits (Section 402(g)). In this case, the plaintiff was a widower who claimed that he should receive survivor benefits determined the same way as for widows, so that he would be able to care for their child.
Read More…Book Review: The Vanishing American Dream
Over Labor Day, I read The Vanishing American Dream, by Gene Ludwig (Disruption Books, 2020). He is Chief Executive Officer and Founder of IBM’s Promontory Financial Group and served as the Comptroller of the Currency during the Clinton Administration. He is a long-time colleague and Promontory was a sponsor of the Academy’s 2013 Ball Award.
The book relates the proceedings of an April 2019 symposium at Yale Law School in which just over two dozen thought leaders, including Academy Members Larry Summers and 2020 Ball Award recipient Jacob Hacker, offered their perspectives on “the economic realities facing middle- and lower-income Americans.”
Read More…
