Social Security’s Disability Insurance (SSDI) program is riddled with problems, including flaws and inefficiencies in the determination process, outdated measures of disability, work disincentives, fraud and abuse, inadequate continuing disability reviews, uncoordinated and complex interaction with other government programs, and inflexibility toward recipients’ wide range of disabilities and work capacities. These problems have contributed to skyrocketing costs and enrollment, and a near-depletion of the program’s finances in 2016.
Among die most prominent in an array of health cue reform measures now pending in Congress is S. 1227, the "HealthAmerica: Affordable Health Care for All Americans Act." The bill's prominence derives mainly from its sponsorship by George Mitchell, the Maine Democrat who is Senate Majority Leader. The 349-page bill also is the most recent and comprehensive version of what is called the "play or pay" approach to health care refoxm. In this, the federal govern- ment would require employers either to"play" by covering their employees (and employee dependents) with at least a specified minimum level of health insurance or to "paypt a payroll tax to fund an expanded Medicaid-type program to cover their workers and dependents. The only employer exempt from this system would be the federal governmem Buried in the bill is a provision that congressmen and their staffs, like other federal workers and refirees, would continue to enjoy a wide choice of privat