This may not have anything to do with AD, but it has a lot to do with civil
rights.

>>Back of the Hand to the Safety Net
>>Secretary O'Neill's candor is refreshing as he asks: Why should there be
>>any social insurance at all?
>>By ROBERT B. REICH

>>In Washington, a "gaffe" occurs when a high-level official accidentally
>>says what he means. The Bush administration has been remarkably
>>gaffe-free so far, with almost everyone sticking to the same bland
>>script. All except Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, that is, whose gaffes
>>offer a glimpse into the real philosophy of the Bush corporation that now
>>runs the United States.
>>O'Neill's latest occurred in a recent interview with the Financial Times
>>in which he questioned why the government should provide Social Security,
>>Medicare or any other social insurance.
>>"Able-bodied adults should save enough on a regular basis so that they
>>can provide for their own retirement and, for that matter, health and
>>medical needs," he said.
>>
>>The Treasury secretary's candor goes a long way toward explaining why
>>Bush's giant $1.3-trillion tax cut--most of whose benefits will go to
>>multimillionaires like O'Neill--hasn't caused more worry in the White
>>House about what will happen to Social Security and Medicare when the
>>baby boomers retire and there's no money left to pay the bill.
>>Bush Inc. assumes that boomers will just take care of themselves.
>>
>>Seen in this light, the commission recently launched by George W. Bush to
>>recommend ways to save Social Security (packed with people already
>>committed to "privatizing" it) and the new White House move to overhaul
>>Medicare with "market-based changes" are fig leafs for a long-term
>>strategy to get rid of these social insurance schemes altogether.
>>
>>O'Neill's candor is refreshing. It deserves more than a "gotcha" from
>>Democrats looking for ways to scare elderly voters in the 2002 mid-term
>>elections and the 2004 presidential contest.
>>The Treasury secretary raises one of the most fundamental questions
>>society faces: Why should there be any social insurance at all?
>>
>>The idea for Social Security was dreamed up by Labor Secretary Frances
>>Perkins and signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935.
>>Unemployment insurance and welfare were parts of the original scheme.
>>Medicare was President Johnson's doing, 30 years later.
>>
>>The broad idea was easily understood by the generations that experienced
>>the Depression, World War II, the Cold War and some deep recessions. Any
>>family could find itself down on its luck through no fault of its own.
>>Family savings could go down the drain if the economy turned really sour.
>>Its breadwinner might lose his (almost always "his") job and have a hard
>>time finding another. Or he might become disabled or die, leaving his
>>wife and children destitute. An elderly person or couple might lose
>>everything in an economic down draft and face their twilight years in
>>grinding poverty.
>>
>>A humane society, it was assumed, would pool some of its resources to
>>guard against these personal misfortunes.
>>Like any insurance system, citizens would be expected to pay small
>>premiums. But unlike private insurance, everyone would be included
>>regardless of the likelihood that they'd need to draw on the insurance
pool.
>>Rich and poor, healthy and sick, young workers and older workers--all
>>would pitch in.
>>
>>Treasury Secretary O'Neill would prefer going back to the days before
>>social insurance, when individuals either had to save their own earnings
>>against the possibility they'd need help down the line or buy their own
>>private insurance. Presumably, if the responsibility rested entirely on
>>their shoulders, they'd save more and take better precaution to avoid
>>harm's way.
>>
>>Some families, however, don't earn enough to allow them to save much of
>>anything. And some harms--a catastrophic illness, a disabling accident, a
>>factory closing, a stock-market plunge--can't be avoided.
>>
>>Meanwhile, private insurers naturally will do everything they can to sign
>>up clients at the lowest risk of needing them, while eschewing the high
>>risks. After all, insurance companies and HMOs aren't charitable
>>institutions--they need to show profits. And all are becoming more
>>efficient at discriminating among potential consumers, weeding out the
>>high risks and marketing to the low.
>>
>>So without social insurance, people who are poorer or who face higher
>>risk of having bad things happen to them won't be covered.
>>People at the other end--richer and at lower risk--will efficiently pool
>>their resources and get insurance at a much lower rate than if they had
>>to bear the extra cost of insuring the poorer and the riskier.
>>
>>It's coming to be like that all over the land. The richer, healthier,
>>younger, well-educated and well-connected and their children are doing
>>better and better. (They even got a big tax windfall just now.) And the
>>gap between them and the bottom half of the nation widens.
>>
>>It's not just an income and wealth gap. It's also a geographical
>>gap--they live farther and farther apart. And a psychological gap--the
>>better off don't even encounter the other half or understand them or
>>empathize with the daily burdens and challenges they face.
>>
>>The welfare "safety net" that was included in the Social Security Act of
>>1935 already is in shreds. Unemployment insurance reaches a far smaller
>>percentage of people who lose their jobs than it did two decades ago.
>>And now Social Security and Medicare are on the dock.
>>
>>When Americans faced a common problem--the Depression, a hot war, a cold
>>war--we understood intuitively that we were all in it together. Someone's
>>misfortune could be anyone's: "There but for the grace of God go I."
>>Social insurance was a natural impulse, a first cousin to patriotism.
>>But that sense of commonality is waning as we drift into separate worlds
>>of privilege and resignation.
>>
>>Treasury Secretary O'Neill and the administration of which he is a part
>>may see the future of American society better than we would like to admit
>>to ourselves. But if that's the future, it won't be much of a society.