Our political correct world has created a new breed of human, one that I call the Perpetual Victim. The Perpetual Victim is easily distinguished from other people by their inability to take responsibility for their own adverse actions or ill-spoken words, instead seeking some other person or entity to pass blame to for their own unfortunate circumstances. Often, the Perpetual Victim relies on historical events to establish their initial qualifications for victimhood, and then extrapolates those historic explanations and applies them to their daily problems. It is rare for a Perpetual Victim to engage in moments of honest self-evaluation, for to do so would expose their charade for what it truly is and would force them to become responsible for themselves.

But a glance through many dictionaries will yield a definition of victim that has no mention of historic acts as a qualifier, instead alluding to acts against a specific person such as murder or assault, or untimely death. You will find references to victims of fraud and victims of war, but in each case, the victim is the person to whom the wrong was actually committed against, not some long dead ancestor or future descendant. But to the Perpetual Victim, actual individual harm is not necessary to claim victim status. One need only be a member of a particular race or religion or nationality to join the ever-growing ranks of Perpetual Victims.

Aside from the obvious benefits of never having to take responsibility for ones destiny, Perpetual Victims can demand special accommodations to “make up for” the ills they have suffered at the hands of society. They can under-perform at their tasks and fail to live up to their personal potential under the guise of social repression. They can insist upon special programs or assistance available only to victims like themselves, deserved as a form of reparations for the ills placed upon their group by historic actions. And through misplaced guilt or a simple desire to placate, society has embraced the Perpetual Victim and all of his woes.

This is not to say that, historically, humans have never been unkind to each other. Indeed, our history is filled with examples of true victims of murderous regimes, war atrocities, racial subjugation, or rampant disease. And, in fact, these horrors still exist today. But unless you have personally been harmed by these events, claiming victim status for yourself denigrates all those whose lives have been ruined or lost by actual injustice or through the ravages of nature.

American history is no different in this respect than that of any other nation. When ours was an expanding nation, the clash of cultures between the European settlers (soon to be Americans) and the native people created whole tribes of victims. Our continuation of the practice of slavery in our formative years provides another common example of historic acts that created a class of victims. These were people who endured violence, incarceration, decimation, and indifference at the hands of governmental policy and cruel masters who applied that policy with glee. Yet, in most, if not all, cases, the people who actually experienced these conditions are no longer alive today, making curious the claims of their descendants that they are also victims of the same acts. And while preceding generations could legitimately lay claim to victim status, and expect some sort of compensation or renewed opportunity for their years of suffering and subjugation, today’s Perpetual Victim seeks only to profit financially from their self-acclaimed victim status while contributing as little as possible to society as a whole. Their victim status is predicated by their state of mind more than on accepted present day practices.

So who qualifies as a Perpetual Victim? The beauty of this system is that nearly everyone can claim victim status for something. Native Americans, blacks, Hispanics, and any other racial classification that is not Caucasian can all claim to be victims of the white mans inherently racist nature. Women can claim to be victims of a male dominated society. White men can claim to be victims of racial promotion instead of performance based promotion. Children can be victims of a society rampant with violent imagery. The elderly may be victims of uncaring children. Employees claim to be victims of uncaring corporations. And the list goes on and on and on. And in our politically correct legislatures, each and every one of these supposed victim classes have been validated and catered to without regard for reality or Common Sense.

But unlike actual victims of crime or disease or violence, who often seek to rebuild their lives in spite of their misfortune, the Perpetual Victim rarely makes serious efforts to change those things or people who are supposedly “keeping them down.” For to do so would inevitably diminish their ability to seek special accommodations as conditions improved and their plight became less taxing. Or, if one aspect of the victim mentality is removed, the Perpetual Victim will actively seek out other reasons to remain as victims, when the true victim of unfortunate events will move forward, albeit with less vigor perhaps than before, or with renewed determination to succeed.

So what does all this talk about victims have to do with politics and social stability? What does thread have to do with fine fabric? If you have a large enough portion of society claiming victim status for one thing or another, and demanding special accommodations or reparations, your population begins to fracture into small, malcontented groups, each seeking a cut of the public money as remedy to their troubles. And as each group seeks reformed social practices to atone for prior actions by their historical oppressors, the expectations of society are lowered for individuals in general, and for the “victims” especially. This pulling in different directions by the different victim groups is not helpful to society. In fact, it works against the whole idea of a melting pot, where different groups can come together, share their cultures, and excel as a new, larger society. And perhaps the biggest effect the victim mentality carries with it is its tendency to not only follow each new generation into the world, but to evolve and become more insidious as it is passed from father to son, from mother to daughter.

It is long past the time that we put to rest the notion of the Perpetual Victim. Unless you are a survivor of genocide, a subject of a tyrannical regime, an escapee from a modern day slavery ring, or a prisoner of political or religious ideology (who has otherwise committed no crime), you can no longer claim victim status simply by being part of a historically wronged group. We have enacted numerous laws to prevent discrimination, and while it still exists in individuals, our national policies seek to establish equity among the people. (OK, we still have a ways to go towards equal recognition of homosexuals, but discrimination laws work for them too.) Therefore, the role of victim should henceforth be reserved for those who are actually harmed themselves.

As a final farewell to Perpetual Victimhood, we should establish a one time only National Day of Victims in which the federal government would publicly apologize for all past policies that enabled injustice towards a specific group of people. Local governments and businesses would stage community victim reconciliation events and apologize for any local acts of institutionalized discrimination. A review of existing law would be held to ensure that all acts of discrimination are truly removed from public policy, including preferential treatment towards historically wronged groups, in favor of equal treatment based primarily on merit and ability. Government programs created to help disadvantaged citizens would be available to all who need it, not just certain groups, but no large-scale reparations would be offered or expected. Personal responsibility for ones own destiny would be advocated and citizens would be taught self-reliance as a means to personal success. And discrimination against a specific race, religion, nationality, or gender would carry more stringent consequences when shown to be the sole cause of a problem and can be proven as such. This is not an attempt to legislate personal feelings, mind you, but rather an attempt to keep irrational prejudices out of the public sphere of action, thus eradicating the basis for the Perpetual Victim to make their claim. It’s time to quit blaming others for our own shortcomings.

Society can’t function and progress when everyone is running around complaining about how they’ll never get a chance to be successful because someone is holding them back simply because they are black or white, male or female, Mormon or Buddhist. With each new victim status granted we become more and more separated from each other. We become less the melting pot and more the tribal nation. America is a country of differences that have come together to create a stronger whole. While there has been widespread injustice in the past, and while there will continue to be individual injustice in the future, this is no longer a country that condones or advocates genocide or slavery or discrimination. We are a country of opportunity, available to anyone willing to put forth their best effort and contribute their fair share. At least, that’s what we keep telling everyone.

As our world becomes more connected, the expansion of freedom and self-rule becomes more and more dependent on the concept of tolerance. Increased contact between varying cultures requires an increase in the ability to respect, if not accept, or even embrace, the differences between each other. Indeed, for freedom to flourish, tolerance is a vital necessity. Tolerance is what allows us to engage with each other despite our differences. Tolerance is what allows our societies to progress. Tolerance opens doors to new concepts in art and science and literature. But when we talk about an ideal is ephemeral as tolerance, what exactly are we talking about?

In today’s social and political atmosphere, the word tolerance has achieved fad status, becoming an element of Political Correctness, losing all real meaning as it has morphed into an acceptance of all things good or bad, it is used to excuse behavior that previously may have been considered unacceptable, or, at the other extreme, to condemn without pause any idea or action with the potential to offend but not necessarily harm. Our social shift away from personal accountability, social responsibility, and our trend towards ever-restrictive social and legal policies stem, in part, from our misapplication of the concept of tolerance. Simply speaking, tolerance is the respect we hold for the freedom of others to be as they see fit, regardless of our own personal choices or feelings, so long as that freedom does not impinge on those of others. Tolerance has nothing to do with liking other people, nor is it about agreeing with another’s point of view. Tolerance doesn’t require you to be friends and join hands and sing songs together. The key to tolerance is respect.

What many people fail to grasp is that tolerance is a circular concept, one that must exist as a whole or not at all. What I mean by this is that in order for a diverse society, or various societies, to interact peacefully, it is necessary for the different parts to each accept one another. Whether defined along racial lines, religious doctrines, sexual preferences, or other less obvious classifications, once one group loses their tolerance towards another, the stage is set for distrustfulness, rivalry, and sometimes violence. And when the circle is broken and respect becomes scarce, freedom and self-rule are in jeopardy.

Individual tolerance capabilities are often a mimicked behavior. From our ability to withstand annoying personality characteristics of friends and family to larger forms of tolerance like racial coexistence and religious harmony, our ability to tolerate different ideas and actions frequently mirror those of our parents and communities. That is not to say that we don’t come to develop our own tolerances as we age, but the patterns are imprinted on us early. It is in our childhood years that most of our prejudices are born and nurtured, and as we age, we shape our experiences with different people around our intolerances instead of letting our experiences shape our views. It may be an unconscious conditioning reflex, but it is one we can learn to overcome. Still most people, on an individual level, tend to develop fairly tolerant demeanors towards differences in people, as is necessary unless one enjoys a strife-filled existence. For despite our internal dislikes, we are also taught that tolerance and peaceful coexistence sometimes requires us to suppress our own desires for the sake of getting along. And if we find ourselves in an intolerable situation, we are taught that it is better to leave than to provoke a conflict. It could be said that one’s level of tolerance is an indicator of one’s maturity.

Social tolerance, while also indicative of a society’s maturity, is a somewhat different animal. Unlike individual tolerance abilities, social tolerance is sometimes referred to as mob mentality because of its tendency to amplify the suppressed dislikes of individuals and transform them into legislation. Social tolerance is a reflection not so much of the combined tolerances of its individual parts, but of the focused intolerances of many different groups. The fewer of these group prejudices there are, the more cohesive a society becomes. Social tolerance also plays a large role in creating personal responsibility by developing behavioral expectations that are reinforced by the community through their laws and interactions with each other.

But having a great capacity for tolerance does not mean that all behaviors are acceptable, or that all ideas should be tolerated. Indeed, much like morality and the law, the parameters for tolerable behavior are necessarily wide, since individual beliefs vary so greatly, but they must still contain defined boundaries of propriety. The question then becomes, “Who gets to decide what is or is not tolerable?”

In reality, the choices are not that difficult to make if we focus on what is intolerable. An intolerable act would necessarily be one that causes harm and/or destruction to a person or their property; acts like murder or rape or theft or vandalism. Indeed, we have already expressed our intolerance to these kinds of acts through legislation. Intolerant ideas already include racism or bigotry, despotism, and megalomania, to name a few. And character traits like laziness and deceitfulness, and hypocrisy are often among those viewed with little tolerance, since they foretell a kind of intolerance of their own. We have no duty to respect or tolerate irrational hatred, true criminality (the kind that harms others), slavery or subjugation, people who take but never contribute, or any other idea or action that interferes with another’s right to freedom or social peace. At the same time, we must recognize that race, religion, sexual preference, and other more petty prejudices are not valid expressions of intolerance in and of themselves.

A peaceful society must find a balance between that which it will tolerate and that which it will not. For the success of any free community, whether it is a village or a nation, depends on its tolerances. Too little tolerance of different ideas and actions will result in an autonomous culture, neither progressing our maturing, nor learning about the rest of humanity, while too much will result in a fractured and immobile legislative process. Too much tolerance of abhorrent behavior leads to chaos, fear, and restrictions, while increased intolerance of terrible acts could provide a helpful attitude shift that may eventually lead to fewer occurrences.

American culture is in a strange place in the evolution of its tolerance capabilities. We promote an ideal of freedom, which demands a high level of social tolerance for diverse races, religions, and so on. Yet we enact legislation that aims to discriminate against certain elements of society. We promote the rule of law as acceptable social behavior. Yet we turn a blind eye to those who openly flaunt our laws in our own land and give a wink and a nod to the governments around the world who use corruption to control their citizens. We export the ideals of democracy, freedom, and self-determination around the world. Yet we openly assist regimes that resist all of these ideals. We pretend to respect all religions. Yet we entertain delusions of superiority over anyone whose god concepts differ from our own, until we convince ourselves that our friends and neighbors may actually be our spiritual (and to some people, mortal) enemies. We rally around the streets decrying the violence in the world. Yet we consistently make excuses for the criminal behavior among us. I could go on but you begin to see the pattern.

True tolerance is essential for the progression of society. Tolerance for that which shows the most creative, most ingenious, most inspirational, and most reasonable aspects of humanity should be nurtured and shared, to further to abilities of humanity, to allow us to succeed together as a species. Intolerance for the most vile, most selfish, least productive,
and least defensible actions and ideas should also be espoused, to help end these barriers to cooperation and prosperity. One requires the will, education, and dedication of the individual. The other requires the will, strength, and consistency of society. In both cases, the ultimate choice belongs to each and every one of us. Through our actions and our words, through our tolerance, we can make the world a better place by standing together for freedom and against irrational intolerance

Does society dictate political goals or is it the other way around? It’s getting tough to tell these days. With campaigns based on “family values” that are never really defined and legislation steeped in religious belief, one wonders which horse is pulling which cart. I use these two examples only because they are they easiest to grab, but the same conclusion can be made when examining many of our cultural activities. In a society based around the concepts of personal liberty and freedom, such as ours, it is always incumbent upon the citizens to defend their own freedom and to respect the freedom of others. This too, should be the goal of government, but instead, the politicians seek to divide the people, by inflaming cultural differences and advancing selective legislation.

It’s easy enough for them to do too. Ours is a multi-ethnic, multi-belief system, melting pot kind of place filled with people from all over the world, each bringing with them a different set of dreams and beliefs as they seek their own liberty. With no single national culture, finding divisive issues to exploit becomes as easy as taking candy from a baby. It’s an effective ploy that detracts us from keeping our eye on the ball, so to speak. While some politicians busily grandstand the newest cause du jour, the rest of our leaders are just as busily spending our hard earned tax dollars on things that further consolidate power for themselves and their benefactors, leaving the public holding an empty bag or looking at a broken program.

But freedom and liberty cannot exist without a measure of responsibility. And it is this very lack of responsibility, on an individual level and on a societal level too, that makes possible the very divisiveness our politicians exploit. In our “anything goes,” “what about me?” society, we seem to have forgotten that a lack responsible stewardship of our freedoms opens the door for government to restrict more of our freedoms in the name of preserving freedom for us all. It is this kind of upside-down reasoning that fits perfectly with our own upside-down thinking that allows us to take our freedom for granted.

Many of our political topics, the so-called “divisive issues” that seek to separate our country and paralyze meaningful, effective legislation, are things that have no place in politics anyway, but instead belong to a different part of life, a more private part of life, the part of life that makes us who we are. And despite the attempts at division, if taken in a non-political context, many of these issues require little more than Common Sense and compromise. Things like advocating tolerance towards religious beliefs or sex. Things like child rearing, teaching responsibility and work ethic. Things like race relations and entertainment. These are the some of the things that define who we are. These are not things that necessarily require legislation, but that doesn’t stop a politician from trying.

Politics should be about making sure the public is safe. Politics should be about foreign relations. Politics should be about maintaining infrastructure or social programs or the effective use of taxes. Politics should be about keeping the playing field as level as possible. But politics has no real claim to family values or public entertainment or philanthropy, other than to encourage people to find common acceptable standards while tolerating those that are not in the mainstream, but also not illegal. Once a political system begins to legislate or manipulate the daily functions and beliefs of the individual and society, freedom goes out the window, replaced by a kind of opiatic melancholy and eventual apathy.

The way to prevent this from happening is to take back the non-political issues from the politicians and resolve social conflict without the need for legislation, because with every new law put on the books, we are losing our ability to determine our own path.

In the next several essays I will begin to explore some of these dividing points that are often exploited by power hungry politicos, and look for ways to relieve the tension that exists in the citizens without having to resort to legal maneuvering. In each case, resolution will require both a changed outlook among the American people and an increased willingness to stand up for themselves. I look forward to conversations with you concerning social tolerance, the victim mentality, “family values” and parenting responsibilities, the media and entertainment industry, philanthropy, trust, and religion.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

We recognize the preceding words as the preamble to our national Constitution. We’ve heard them in whole or in part throughout our lives, but as I listen to the conversations around me, as I read and answer comments to my own essays, it seems to me as if these ideals have become nothing more than words on a page. We see them. We read them. We say them. Yet we don’t seem to truly grasp what they mean. The intentions of the men who wrote these words so many years ago have been lost in the sea of prosperity and personal gratification so that they no longer hold the same promise that they once did. Or rather, the promise is still there, but the readers no longer believe in it. The importance of understanding these ideals is paramount if our chosen form of government, self-rule, is to endure.

We The People These first three words are the most important words in the entire preamble because it is with these three words that our form of government is established. We the people. Say it out loud and let it roll across your tongue. We the people. It couldn’t be any simpler to understand. We are our government. We are the ones responsible for making the decisions. We are the ones responsible for accountability. The government is us. From a practical standpoint, this is even truer today than when the framers wrote these words, for in their time, women couldn’t vote, non-whites couldn’t vote, often the poor couldn’t even vote. But as we’ve intellectually matured as a group, these inequities have been remedied and today, every adult American citizen has the chance to speak their mind about the workings of government, through their votes and their voices. But we don’t. It is time to quit thinking about government as an entity apart from the people, because in doing so, we establish a rivalry when one should never be.

From the left and from the right and even from the politicians, we hear how we can’t trust the government with this or how we need the government for that or how the government screwed up this or lied about that. We love to trash our elected leaders and advance their cynicism through decisive but utterly trivial matters while turning a blind eye to overt dereliction of political duty and outright corruption. We choose our leaders with one and a half eyes closed, and then keep sending them back regardless of their dedication to serving the citizens of the land. And the really sad part is that those doing the choosing barely represent half of the Americans whose voice should be heard. And the cycle is a self-perpetuating one. Less direct participation means less understanding, leading to less interest, accountability, and trust, which leads to further alienation, completing the circle. Mostly through apathy, We The People have abdicated our self-determination and bemoaned its loss in the same breath, and now we are left in two camps. One camp distrusts all things governmental and won’t have anything to do with it, including voting, except when they somehow personally benefit. The other camp distrusts all things governmental too, but gets out and votes for one side while spewing vileness at the other. With just over half of half of the population deciding which ideology will rule the day, We The People does not live up to its potential.

The other parts of the Preamble provide a course of action for our government to follow. “In order to form a more perfect Union,” implies compromise when necessary to further the goals of society in ways that benefit the greatest number of people. Promoting “justice, domestic tranquility, common defense and general welfare” outlines the established parameters for our government to work within, and “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” instills in us the duty to balance the benefits of today’s decisions with the consequences for tomorrow’s public. But in the light of today’s political environment, compromise is considered a sign of weakness, promoting the common good is passé, and forward thinking is a waste of time. This is what happens when We The People separate ourselves from our government. Without We The People, the whole thing just sort of falls apart.

Sitting around complaining about the failings of government can be a productive thing, but only if it leads to action to fix the problem. Yet in the charged political climate we find ourselves in, new ideas are torn apart without examining their merit while each side accuses the other of stonewalling. We look at this mess from afar, thinking we can’t possibly make a difference, but to think that is wrong. We have a voice. We have to use it. It is preposterous for any political party to lay claim to having a mandate from the people. They could at best claim a slim victory between the most vocal. But imagine if every eligible citizen turned out to vote and let his or her voices be heard. All these previously unheard voices would need someone to represent them and their needs, bringing more variety into the political arena, more opportunity for real representation, more willingness to try new ideas, to fix the status quo when it needs fixing.

By its very nature, politics is powerful. But it should not be about having power. In selecting people to make our collective decisions for us, we entrust them with our daily lives. Such trust should not be taken lightly, but it is because low citizen participation ensures easy reelection and low accountability. It is time for that to end. It is time to let our voices be heard, all of our voices. We hold our election process up to the world as the model which to follow, and brag about mandates with 50% or less of eligible voter turnout. Then we turn around and mock as “banana republics” those countries whose voter turnout is in the 60% range. Am I alone in seeing the hypocrisy of this? As we continue the slide towards apathy, the situation will only get worse, with fewer and fewer people making the decisions that affect us all.

So where do We The People go from here? First, make sure that you vote, especially in federal and state elections. Encourage others to vote or help get people registered. Talk to each other. Think about solutions to our shared problems instead of tearing apart new ideas because “the government can’t be trusted.” If we don’t trust our government, we are really saying that we don’t trust each other or ourselves. Find people you can trust and help get them elected. After all, our elected officials are raised in our communities and are supposed to share our values, values that have guided us for generations even as they continue to evolve. Leave the political party machines that depend on your fears and mistrusts to stay in power. Support people who will truly stand for the values laid out in the Preamble to our Constitution. By putting ourselves back in the driver’s seat, We The People can revive the trust in self-government, tear down the wall we’ve created, and get back to establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity as we were set out to do.

Proponents of comprehensive national health care fall short of the mark when it comes to proposing an equitable plan to pay for it. Naturally, the first thing we can do about making sure people can afford health care is to reduce the entire price structure, focusing medicine back on care and less on profit. And, just as importantly, we must aggressively prosecute those individuals or companies that perpetuate fraudulent billing claims, enriching themselves while robbing the system of needed finances. These measures will help decrease the costs of health care considerably, as do many of my suggestions in the preceding three essays. (Strangely, these are not areas that are focused on; instead regulation explores areas to cut care rather than rein in costs.) But the fact remains that health care is still going to cost money, and it should be a shared responsibility between the general public and the health care industrial complex. Citizens must shoulder the costs for their own well-being and medical care, but the industries that depend on sickness to survive should also establish a public trust to help defray the costs of long term or catastrophic illness. At the same time, medical costs must be kept within financial reach for all legal citizens, regardless of their actual income level.

First, we need to have a more clear vision of what a reasonably healthy person’s annual medical costs may be. Simply a random ordinary citizen, with one medical physical a year, two dental cleanings a year, and one vision check a year, even at $200 per visit, the annual bill is around $800. Let’s throw in a few random blood tests, two cavity fillings, a pair of glasses and a pair of contacts- roughly $700. Finally, we’ll add various medicines, both over-the-counter and prescription drugs at $200. Annual total is $1700, or $142 per month. Now honestly, most people go years without cavities or blood tests, or even eye doctor visits and physicals. Their annual costs could be much lower, assuming that no catastrophes occur. (These dollar figures are estimates and for illustrative purposes only. Actual costs may in fact be much higher due to rampant greed within and without the industry.)

The simplest solution is a national health tax; the collected funds being deposited into a publicly administered and managed account, and disbursed according to well defined guidelines. The tax itself could be collected in several ways, to better ensure that all citizens are contributing to the fund according to their financial ability. To start, every legally employed citizen would deposit in to the system a percentage of their earnings, deducted from their regular paychecks, pre-tax. The formula for determining the percentage each person pays could be derived in several ways: basing it on an average annual medical cost of a healthy person at their age; by dividing the total population by the total national health care bill to arrive at a per capita figure; using the percentages from either of the former equations and developing a sliding percentage scale further based on actual income. And we’d need to figure in the costs for children and retiree coverage, since they are not in the workforce but will still need care. Any formula will be imperfect in the goal of attaining universally affordable health care, simply because the word “affordable” is such a relative term. But some such formula would need to be agreed upon that best reflected equitable terms for the largest number of citizens.

For those who can, but for whatever reasons do not (stay-at-home parent comes to mind), have regular employment, the health tax could be collected from the primary worker’s pay or through an annual tax payment, similar to today’s income tax. Or, more creatively, these citizens can recoup their health costs to the system by working in the system as orderlies and assistants for a fair hourly wage, the earnings of course being returned to the tax fund to cover their annual contribution rate. Such a barter arrangement should be limited to those not in the established workforce, to ensure a continued influx of actual cash from those who are, but would further reduce the overall operational costs of health care in general.

In return for paying the health tax, citizens would enjoy free office visits and aid from their neighborhood clinics, discussed in the previous essay, “The Doctor Will Be With You Shortly.” Vaccinations, minor stitching, first aid, and minor aches and pains would be treated as needed and would require no co-pays or material costs. Also included at no cost to patients would be basic pre-natal visits, bi-annual dental exams and cleanings, and an annual vision test if needed. Provided the medical matter could be resolved within the neighborhood clinic setting, citizens could help control costs for themselves and the system overall by learning what requires a doctor’s attention and what does not. The neighborhood clinic is the first barrier in the war to controlling costs, which it does by both handling minor, non-emergencies and by educating patients to recognize real medical problems from over-hyped non-issues. Also covered by the national tax would be annual medical screenings at your primary personal physician.

Patient costs would move beyond the national tax and into the fee-tax arena once their sickness went beyond the scope of the neighborhood clinic. Any visit to a personal primary physician, except for an annual preventive screening, would require a co-pay and a materials fee, again based on a formulaic percentage of some sort, but with a maximum ceiling and a consistent, reality based materials cost list. For those citizens unable to manage these costs, a no-low income safety program paid for in part by the public trust fund established by the health industry would cover these costs.

Finally, catastrophic medical situations could be paid for through a higher co-pay, based on procedure rather than on a standard admission fee, and adjusted according to an equitable formula. In addition to the co-pay, the patient would be responsible to pay up to 50% of the actual costs of the medical procedure, up to a maximum out-of-pocket expense, but would be allowed to negotiate a no-interest, long-term, no penalty, flex pay installment agreement. Such an agreement could not be used to foreclose on any citizen’s property or garnish of their wages too severely, provided the citizen maintained communications with the fund administrator. At the same time, citizens trying to evade their medical bills with malicious intent should be brought to justice and forced to repay, this time at the terms of the courts.

With regards to medications, cost control measures could be applied so that common remedies are readily affordable while designer drugs are much more expensive. Medical necessities like crutches, wheelchairs, and other reusable items could be rented for low daily or weekly fees, paid entirely by the patient, with the money being recycled into the system to perpetuate itself indefinitely.

The national health tax would pay the actual costs of maintaining the nations health system, from buildings and administration, to doctor’s fees and diagnostic and treatment costs, as well as to continue ongoing discovery and cures. But it would not pay for any type of elective surgery; doctor assisted suicide, or non-medically necessary abortions. Patients succumbing to the vanity medicines like elective plastic surgery or enhancement or magic libido potions should be required to foot the entire bill for these procedures, and at elevated costs and perhaps even be subjected to a vanity tax as well.. Provided that the procedure is not a necessary element of some greater illness or accident, elective surgeries like these use up valuable medical resources and should really belong in a private field of medicine, completely removed from a national care plan. The same is
true for doctor-assisted suicide, since the issue raises serious questions for people of differing faith. While the option should be available for those who want it, they should not rely on commingled tax dollars to pay for the costs. And really, how much can a few pills really cost? Finally, non-necessary abortions should be paid for by the patient, unless in case of medical necessary or verifiable rape or incest.

Contributions by the health care industry to a public trust fund would help defray costs incurred by expensive, life saving operations, long term-care for patients, and no-low income patients. In return for their contributions to the fund, they would receive generous tax breaks that could be reinfused into their R & D programs. They could receive specific supply contracts to ensure a steady flow of business. And all businesses, save for the insurance industry, would benefit by not having to pay health costs for employees and their families, something only fair if the National Whole Life Retirement Plan were to be adopted, as businesses would be solely responsible for funding the basic level of the nation’s retirement program.

The ideas presented in this four part discussion on medical care are a starting point, not necessarily a final answer. But taken together, they represent an effort to move outside the current environment of greed and profit above all else. Medical care is something we all need at some point in our lives. We should never expect a free ride, but we should also never have to fear that the costs of getting care are out of reach.

One of the most frequent complaints about our medical system is the lack of availability to doctors and facilities, commonly referred to as “access to care.” Several factors have converged to create this problem, not least among them a decreasing number of doctors, a decreasing number of facilities, an increasing population, and a greater demand for care. A typical doctor’s appointment may take a month to schedule, hardly a help if you’re really sick. A referral to an urgent care clinic reveals the irony of its name, as an average wait of hours is anything but urgent. And emergency rooms are filled with people insistent upon their imminent demise, choking the facilities ability to help true emergencies as they arrive. All of these elements play a role in increasing the costs of health care by creating a shortage of care. The result is a system with more patients than doctors, more patients than facilities, and more patients without patience.

Solving the problem of access means we have to acknowledge that our current health structure is inadequate to modern society. Increased knowledge should have led to a more efficient system, but instead has given rise to ever increasing numbers of treatable conditions, driving us to our doctor’s doors at the first sign of illness. With an increasing population on top of that, doctors are finding themselves facing more patients with marginal health concerns, leaving them less time to address more serious health issues. Just as emergency room nurses prioritize incoming patients according to their injury, it is time our entire health care system performed triage on itself, establishing a system that addresses different levels of health care at different levels, and differentiating between necessary and elective medical procedures.

Suppose that the first line of health care treatment was a neighborhood clinic. Staffed mostly with novice doctors and nurses, but led by a seasoned doctor, these primary care clinics would be an integral part of the community, dispensing first aid, vaccinations, minor stitches or casts, caring for sprained muscles, colds, flu’s, and other lesser medical problems. One clinic per thousand residents (an admittedly randomly chosen number, for illustrative purposes only) would almost assure quick care when needed, and easy appointments for the rest. The facilities would be owned and administered by the public, and the doctors and nurses could receive tuition credits and on site housing options to accommodate a lower salary commensurate with their experience level. While working in the neighborhood clinics, doctors and nurses could continue their education towards a specialty, at no cost, and after a certain number of years experience and specialized training, could move into the next career phase of medicine, the Specialized Care Practice. Patients would utilize their neighborhood clinics as their first resource for the aforementioned medical needs. If their illness exceeds the level of primary care, patients would be sent to their specialized care doctor, who also would be their primary personal physician.

Each person, or family as the case may be, would have their own personal physician to turn to in addition to the neighborhood clinic. This would be the doctor you went to see for more serious medical problems like prolonged pain or if you needed diagnostic tests like blood tests or x-rays or MRI’s. This doctor would also perform comprehensive annual physicals for you as part of a preventive medical plan. Your dentist and eye doctor would fall into this class of doctors too, working in conjunction with your medical doctor to provide the patient with overall health care. Your primary doctor(s) would also be able to refer you to another specialist when necessary to help determine the course of your treatment. As with the neighborhood clinics, primary care practices should be developed to ensure adequate doctor-patient ratios in the communities they serve. Various specialists could reduce the overhead costs of separate facilities by creating community specialist clinics, larger versions of the neighborhood clinic due to the greater number of doctors and diagnostic tools. Unlike the neighborhood clinic, these facilities would be owned or leased by the doctor groups themselves. Another difference between the neighborhood clinic and the specialist clinics would be the matter of choice. With the neighborhood clinic, patients would have a designated clinic based on their home address. But your personal physician could be entirely up to you. Because this doctor could potentially manage your health care for your lifetime, it is important to choose someone you feel comfortable with, and different people have different health concerns. Since these doctors are specialists too, what you may need from a doctor could be different from what I need, but only you and I can make those choices for us. Doctors and nurses at this level of medicine would also have continued education requirements and testing levels before becoming eligible for hospital staffing, the final layer of a reorganized system.

Hospital care was designed for serious injury or illness, or birthing, or prolonged care and treatment. But hospitals today have become a catchall for anyone with anything who can’t see a regular doctor. With the institution of neighborhood clinics, coupled with annual preventive care and diagnostics from a personal physician, it could be possible for hospitals to return to their intended tasks. Barring an actual emergency situation, patients should need a personal doctors referral, or a referring doctors AND personal doctors referral, before being admitted. This would not apply to actual emergencies, severe trauma, or life-threatening conditions. But except for these types of patients, any person without a referral for hospital care should be sent back to their personal physician for care. This would have the effect of ensuring that hospital staff could better address critical patients instead of worrying about keeping the peace in the waiting rooms. Doctors would refer patients to hospitals for conditions requiring surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and childbirth, to name a few. Again, hospital size and number should be in a direct ratio to the populations they serve. Hospital wards could be divided into multiple building complexes too, to better prevent internal spread of disease, and to concentrate specialists together to provide better patient care. Like the neighborhood clinics, hospitals would be public owned and administered, allowing costs to be accountable and removing the “profit versus care” conundrum.

I mentioned the necessity earlier of differentiating between necessary and elective medical procedures. Elective medicine has recently become a boon industry as scientific advances extend beyond simple health concerns and embrace the cult of youth, self-image, and behavioral control. Elective medicine would include any procedure that is primarily intended to combat the visible effects of aging. But it could also include juvenile behavioral medications used to control a child’s attentiveness or aggression in place of parental guidance and discipline, or adult medications intended to increase certain physiological capabilities. Since the nature of these practices is not usually necessary for good health, they would fall outside the realm of the public health system. While doctors specializing in these areas of care would still need to be licensed and have completed the same initial training steps, they would not be eligible for public health dollars to cover their fees. And prescriptions for elective medications would not be regulated as far as costs were concerned. The only exception could be a patient referred by their primary physician for a medical necessity (read burn victim to plastic surgeons for example).

While this structure leaves out areas such as hospice care and assisted living care, I think that these could be considered lateral elements of the second tier of
health care. At the heart of such reorganization is, of course, public education. Ensuring that the public knows where to go for each level of illness would be vital to keeping facilities and doctors accessible. Just as important is letting people know that they will always be able to choose their personal doctor for their overall care, despite using neighborhood clinics for the minor problems. This stratification only helps ensure that doctors responsible for your total care have taken the time to learn their specialty and have been tested and licensed for your piece of mind. Such measures alone could lead to fewer misdiagnoses and hospital screw-ups, not only providing better access, but better care in the process.

Of course at this point it becomes incumbent upon me to provide the means and methods by which we pay for all this health care, because health care affordability dwarfs access as an issue of contention, and access is a pretty big issue. In my next essay, I’ll offer this final element of health care reform that, along with the cost saving measures already discussed in “Your Money or Your Life-The Costs of Health Care,” should provide an affordable, equitable, and more efficient means of paying for our good health.

Health care costs are the fastest growing expenses for businesses and families. Even those with health insurance can find themselves in serious debt after one medical emergency. Office visits, treatment and medication costs, co-pay’s and monthly premiums add up to thousands of dollars each year, yet the covered care options lessen. What drives the costs of health care through the roof? The answer is…everything. From the cost of medical training to the facilities and equipment to the pills we take to soothe us, the erupting costs of health care comes from all corners of the industrial-medical complex that we have in place today. What drives these costs up though is something pretty basic, something known simply as greed.

Once upon a time, medicine was about healing people, or at the very least, easing their suffering. The role of doctor was a respected position in a society, and the doctor could always be counted on to come to ones aid any time, day or night. Sometimes you would heal, sometimes you would die, but always, the doctor would be doing what he could to help. Many doctors were not rich people, for the people that they served were not rich people. Money and medicine were not incompatible; they were just not synonymous. There were no pharmaceutical companies, no hi-tech equipment, no real overhead at all. You went to the doctor, told him your ailment, and he fixed you up with what you needed right then and there. Quick, cheap, and sometimes it even worked.
As such, a doctor’s payment often depended on two things: the effectiveness of his cure, and the relative wealth of the patient. In many cases, in-kind trades often replaced cash payments, which the doctor kept or sold for cash, as he needed to.

But the advancements in both medicines and knowledge merged with an increasing, then aging population. As our ability to actually cure diseases or operate on injured people became more adept, and as procedures became more standardized and effective, medicine shifted away from a service-oriented industry into a profit driven industry. It was discovered that people would pay good money for a treatment that really worked. Doctors could now heal more people with less effort, prescribing the perfect pill to fix your ill. And when there’s money to be made, everyone wants a piece of it. So let’s look at some of the costs of our health system, and see if we can cut those down using the service-oriented mindset and a healthy dose of Common Sense.

Let’s start with the costs of medical school. In 2004, the average debt a medical school graduate received with their diploma was between $105,000 and $140,000, depending on whether you went to a public or private university. Compare that to the graduating class of 1985 whose debt was $22,000 to $26,500. This debt represents the unpaid portion of their education only, with total 4-year costs of medical school topping out at $225,000 for a private university. With costs like these, it’s no wonder that doctors now try to get in as many patients per day as they can. There’s just no time for personal care when you’ve got a loan balance that large hanging over your head. The result of such high costs is a decreasing number of practicing physicians in this country. The solution? For starters, put a cap on public university tuition for doctors. Then offer a tuition trade-off program that would allow qualified students to receive free medical training. In return, the student would sign an agreement requiring them to work as a primary physician, at a greatly reduced fee, for the same number of years that they received training. For those students not taking advantage of the free tuition program, we could institute a graduate mentoring program that provides an opportunity to reduce costs of support staff at schools by pairing recent graduates with upcoming students and reducing the amount of their school loans proportionately. Finally, we develop national training and licensing standards for both general and specialized physician degrees that ensure a consistent level of knowledge and care. This would also have the effect of standardizing licensing fees paid by doctors, reducing the overall costs of becoming a doctor.

The costs of medical training are only the first drop in a very large bucket. Consider malpractice insurance premiums for doctors and hospitals. One of the unintended results of our increased medical knowledge is our assumption that doctors can cure anything. But for many diseases, doctors can only try certain treatments, offering no predictable or promised outcomes, only doing the best they can. In cases where there is no proven treatment, it is incumbent on a doctor and patient to have a clear understanding of the course of action, along with the possible outcomes, and as long as that plan is followed, no suit should be brought against a doctor. In instances of actual incompetence though, lawsuit awards should be commiserate with actual harm, meaning that non-life changing mistakes do not always amount to million dollar judgments. Mediation should precede any court activity, leaning towards non-cash restitution as often as possible. Again, if these or other measures result in decreased insurance costs for doctors, those savings can be passed along to the patients, lowering the costs for all.

What about administrative costs? Doctors and hospitals spend a whole lot of time and money keeping track of patient records, dealing with insurance companies, processing billing forms, and the like. Eliminating medical insurance as we know it would save millions in reduced manpower alone. Simplifying billing procedures through the adoption of a new way of funding health care will save even more. (In a coming essay, I’ll present my idea for funding medical care.) We could also adopt computer technology to manage the problem of keeping patient records private while eliminating the need for a large paper database. Imagine an encrypted computer disk in two parts. The patient keeps one of the pieces and the doctor keeps the other part. The patient’s piece would contain all of their personal medical history in an encrypted form that could only be decoded with the doctor’s piece. The doctor’s piece would be like a universal code breaker. Both pieces would have a randomly encrypted pattern to prevent accidental data exposure, but upon joining together would become readable to both doctor and patient. To further protect the patient’s information, the system could even require a biometric indicator, like a fingerprint or DNA sample before proceeding with the decoding. The information would remain private and in the hands of the patient, preventing any kind of data theft. With the increase of computing power coupled with the decreasing cost of computer technology, such reduction in administrative costs would further streamline the whole system, again reducing overall costs of health care.

Another way to reduce the costs of health care is to control the price and advertising methods of medications. Pharmaceuticals are among the highest costs seniors face with regards to their health care. Profits are so great on these drugs, that four of the biggest makers of pills (Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, and Bristol Meyer) had revenue in 2004 of over $100 billion. Only $17 billion of that profit was recycled into research and development of new products. And another chunk of change was diverted into liability accounts to pay for the inevitable lawsuits that come when a promised new drug fails to perform up to standards or start making people worse than they started out. The fact that these drug manufacturers push their pill on everyone for every possible ailment isn’t lost on many, but our own gullibility rewards their efforts by gobbling up whatever they peddle, often without regard for the long-term consequences associated with the latest magic pill. Instituting a minimum and maximum price range for prescription and over the counter drugs may reduce drug company profits, and restricting advertising o
f drugs to the medical industry instead of the untrained consumer may result in drug manufacturers spending more time and money in R&D to ensure safer products. Their reward for better products, though not realized directly in financial gain could come in the form of tax credits or special government grant programs. And they’ll still be making plenty of money to boot.

I know that cutting expenses up and down the chain is only one of the ways that we can reduce overall health care costs. There are other areas to look at too, from aggressively prosecuting fraud to allowing patients to rent or borrow equipment like crutches or wheelchairs instead of purchasing them at high prices. But even with the reduction of these structural costs, we won’t completely solve the problem of how each person pays for their health care or how we, as a nation, dispense our health care services. Those topics will be addressed in the next few posts.

Despite our individual differences, there is one fundamental aspect of being human that everyone shares- we all experience illness at some point in our lives. Some people are lucky, and only succumb to a cold every few years. Some people are accident prone, often getting scrapes, breaks, or bruises. Still other people suffer from debilitating disease or worse, genetic irregularities that lead to serious complications. But the fact remains that at some point, each of us will most likely experience a physical or mental malady. And what do we do when we get sick? We look for someone, or something, to help make us feel better.

In the last century, humans have made impressive leaps and bounds in medical science, providing us with more effective health care than ever before. From eradicating deadly diseases to performing heart surgery to curing infections, modern science has extended our longevity and increased our ability to remain healthier longer. Our continued research into how the body works and what creates sickness have led to the creation of life saving drugs, more effective diagnoses, and comprehensive treatments. Yet for all our advances, we still have much to learn. Modern medicine, much like predicting the weather, is still not an exact science.

Still, it would seem that from a health care perspective, we are living in the best of times. We may never eradicate injury or illness in their entirety, but we have the ability to diagnose and treat most problems and our knowledge increases every day. Yet as our technological prowess increases, and as our pharmaceuticals become more targeted, the costs of obtaining the benefits of our advances continue to skyrocket. In 2001, health care spending in America amounted to $1.4 trillion dollars. That number is expected to be $3.1 trillion by 2012. Double-digit increases in insurance premiums are now the yearly norm, and more people have to make the choice between paying for coverage or paying the rent. Employers, struggling under the burden of premiums for employees and their families are also cutting benefits and increasing co-pays in an effort to continue to offer benefits at all. And the giant pharmaceutical companies are pushing their latest designer pills on the public, promising a cure to every ill, but at a cost. Medical care seems to be all about profit these days and less about healing the sick and preventing illness.

If the high costs of health care were the only problem with our system, it would be enough. Unfortunately, the quality of our care, or maybe more accurately, the manner of our care, has taken a hit too. In an effort to make medicine more profitable for providers and more economical for consumers, the HMO was born. Not only has the HMO model failed to keep costs in check, it has removed the personal care by turning treatment into a fiscal matter instead of a human one. Doctors, with the ever-looming cloud of a malpractice suit over their heads, are less inclined to be decisive or even forthright with their patients about their conditions. Secure patient records, privacy, and confidentiality are a top concern, as consolidated databases offer fertile ground for identity thieves. Clinics and hospitals are overcrowded, understaffed, and often badly managed, adding long waits to the growing list of negative aspects of our system. In short, we have a real problem with the direction our health care system is going, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

But unlike a doctor who must perform triage on a patient with multiple injuries and treat the most threatening injury first, we must look at our broken health care system as a whole and find a way to make the different parts more synchronistic if we are ever to create a system that embraces the ideals of good health care. We must examine the reasons for increasing costs and find a way to control them. We must develop better access to medical care. We must protect the privacy of the individual. And we must look at our own attitudes and assumptions regarding health care. We must make the choice that medical care is a right and not a privilege. And as a basic human right, we must create a program that offers each citizen a consistent level of health care and find a way to keep the costs in line. And we must recognize that public health care is a necessary component of a functioning society, preventing disease from destroying the population, thus keeping the society intact and growing. Because if we don’t have our health, what do we have?

The American Dream is a quest for personal happiness. In this quest, nothing can derail a person’s hopes and dreams quite like medical problems. The uncertainty of recovery is hard enough to get through. The added uncertainty of getting and paying for treatment only makes things that much harder.

With the implementation of the National Whole Life Pension Plan, one of the problems facing national retirement reform is removed from the puzzle. The Whole Life Pension Plan would replace the current system for future generations, leaving us to concentrate on salvaging the current system for those of us who have already been born. Unfortunately, there is no sure fire solution that is painless or equitable. Everyone alive today who is eligible to receive retirement benefits from the current program will be hit with unpleasant consequences of reform. Our task then, is to try to mitigate the pain without breaking the financial back of the nation or our retirees.

The 2005 Social Security Trustee Report clearly states that beginning in 2005, the program will experience a $4 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years. To put this in perspective, the entire national budget for 2005 is just over $2 trillion dollars. To replace this imbalance would require the entire tax receipts for two years running, putting an immediate end to all other government functions, just to make up the difference. On a year-by-year basis, we would need to funnel $53.3 billion dollars every year for 75 years into the fund to make up this shortfall. And these would have to be actual cash infusions, not simply budgeted dollars that don’t really exist or are creatively accounted for. Clearly, the task is daunting, if not downright unfeasible. So what can we do?

First, and probably most importantly, we must discontinue the pay-as-you-go standard that the current system relies upon. This practice is what has led to the massive transference of money from the trust fund, a reserve specifically designed to accommodate changing conditions, by allowing the government to subsidize the general operating budget with surplus retirement account money. Now, after decades of exploiting this easy source of ready cash, our elected leaders have left our retiring citizens out to dry, and left our working citizens with an empty promise of future security.
But just as unscrupulous politicians have bled the fund at every turn, we the people must also bear some of the responsibility for allowing the situation to continue. After all, we elected them. Now, we must enact stringent restrictions forbidding retirement funds from being used for general budget expenses.

The system, if left unchanged both in tax rate contributions and benefit payouts, will still be able to offer a 68-74% return to people who are 26 years or older today and will retire in the 2040’s. Assuming we can’t find the revenue to fill that $4 trillion dollar gap, what changes can we make to help ensure that future retiree’s under this system aren’t celebrating retirement in the soup line?

Well, there is no “one-size fit’s all” solution, and there is no painless solution either. The simple fact is that some give and take will need to occur, some people will get less than they were promised, and other people will need to have some flexibility that could enable them to make up the shortfall. Many of the ideas have already been brought up, so I make no claim to originality. The problem has been the resistance to combine all of the so-so ideas in favor of doing nothing. There are no great ideas. We’ll all get the shaft a little bit. It’s time to accept this and move forward, doing the best we can with a bad situation, while instituting a new plan for the future generations.

People who are 55 years old or older, or are currently retired, should have no changes made to their benefits. They faithfully held up their end of the bargain with the government and should get back what they have put into the system. Legislation could be passed that encouraged well off individuals in this group to forgo their benefit checks if they had a retirement nest egg of $750,000 or more, or an annual annuity of over $37,500. ($750,000 divided by a life span of 20 years, assuming a retirement age of 70.) We could offer tax breaks or tax-free retirement withdrawals or other such incentives. Then, we must also slowly phase out the indexing aspects of the plan, starting with those who need the benefits least (the well off, as described above.)

Those who fall between the ages of 40 and 54 will be the first group to receive a lower percentage benefit than the group before them. They will be the first to swallow the bitter pill. To begin with, all individuals with a private retirement nest egg of at least $750,000 would forfeit their claim to social security. I know it’s not fair, but sometimes life just works that way. In return, they could expect an off the top 25% tax credit every year after retirement. Next, we begin phasing in benefit decreases, starting around 5-8%. Again, we could lessen the effects by offering tax-free deposits (up to a certain specified amount) and withdrawals on all personal retirement accounts, eliminate tax on interest generated by a retirement account on a yearly basis, and regulate retirement fund administration fees so that every person clearly can see what the costs of maintaining their retirement accounts are. Finally, we eliminate the inheritance tax permanently for this group, provided that all remaining financial assets are transferred into a retirement account for the receiving heirs.

People between 25 and 39 years of age will face a tougher road than those ahead of them, since this group will have to bear the largest benefit decrease compared to what they have paid in to the system. To begin with, if no taxes are raised, this group can expect to see reduced benefits, giving them monthly checks somewhere around 68-74% of what today’s retirees receive. As a result, these workers, in addition to the changes made for the proceeding retiree group, could receive a 50% off the top tax credit every year after retirement. They could also have tax-free retirement contributions to personal retirement accounts with no ceiling on deposit amounts.

This leaves us the group of people who are under 25 years old before the implementation of the National Whole Life Pension Plan. They would decrease their contributions to a system that will likely have little left to offer them. They would receive all the benefits of the preceding groups, but their tax credit on retirement funds would be 100%. In essence, they would divvy up the remnants of a dying system, with perhaps a specialized program being developed to fill in the gaps, funded through lowered expenses as a result of other government streamlining.

As I said, these ideas are all available, but no plan for this system is without pain, including increasing the tax base to levels that would likely have negative consequences in other financial areas. Essential is the task of repaying the borrowed funds as soon as possible and restricting any future raids on the account. This is a problem that will be felt for at least 75 years. There is no lottery big enough fill the void. Minor tax increases could ease the burden slightly, but too high of a tax increase could be just as harmful. A minor increase may be a necessary component of any plan, but realistic compromises will have to be made. Reforming our retirement program to ensure a graceful end to the present program and a smooth transition to the Whole Life Pension Plan will take patience and sacrifice. The down side is that we all lose. The upside is that our descendants won’t have to face this situation again.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Readers are advised that the plan presented in the following essay is one which would apply to future generations and would not directly benefit current workers except in such a way as to remove the burden of repairing the current retirement program for future generations. This plan would run parallel to the current system, eventually replacing it as the sole national retirement program. A final essay on the topic of national pension plans will address the problems of the current system and how to sustain it until this new plan came to maturity.

In my last essay, Crafting A National Pension Plan, I presented a case for developing a national pension system for retired workers based upon the concepts of gratitude for a lifetime of hard work and appreciation for participating in the continuance of the American Dream. In this essay, I will describe my thoughts for administering such a system in a way that is both equitable and economical. After much thought, I feel that this can best be accomplished by a short summary, followed by an imaginary “Question & Answer” period. So without further ado, I offer this plan to you.

The National Whole Life Pension Plan seeks to accomplish one goal and one goal only. Its task is to ensure that all citizens will have a standard minimum retirement fund available to them when they reach the end of their productive working years. It accomplishes this goal by recognizing that although all citizens may not be equal with regards to employment skills or desires, each task is of equal value to a smoothly functioning society. Whether you choose to rear children, wash dishes in a restaurant, operate an oil-drilling platform, or design computer programs; your financial security in old age should not be dependant upon how much money you earned in your lifetime.

As its name implies, the National Whole Life Pension Plan would begin at birth with $5000 placed into an account in your name. This account would belong to you and you alone, but would be pooled with all of the other personal accounts from people born in the same year. For the first 30 years of the plan, the government would deposit $600 per year into your account. At the age of 31, the government would end their yearly contribution and you would then be able to make contributions of your own until you reach age 70. At age 70, you would retire and begin to draw an annual stipend from your account, tax free, for at least 20 years. Once you reach the age of 90, all of your basic costs of living would be free, paid for through a separate social security program for elderly citizens.

Q: How much is this program going to cost compared to the current system?
A: At its inception, the program would cost approximately$22.5 billion dollars. This figure is derived from the average number of new births in the U.S. (4 million/year) times $5000 plus that same number of births (4 million) times $600. Each year the program would require an additional $20 billion for the new births, $2.5 billion for the yearly $600 deposits, and an additional $2.5 billion for each preceding years births up to 30 years. At its peak-funding requirements, the program would be paying out $95 billion dollars a year. ($20 billion for new account start-ups and $70 billion in account contributions.) The current system pays out $540 billion per year (for both benefits and administration costs.)

Q: Who pays for this system?
A: Unlike the current retirement program in which the employee and employer contribute a like amount into the national fund, under the new plan, only businesses would be required to contribute to the Whole Life Pension Plan. The reason for this is twofold: first, business is the main profiteer of an employees hard work, deriving its continually climbing profits from employee ingenuity and dedication; and secondly, because of the changes in the retirement system mentality, employers would no longer be contributing to a matching retirement pension like the 401k or other private plan, and would likely not have other benefit costs, or at least much lower ones, through reform of the medical industry. (Another topic to be sure.) Currently, the federal government collects $819 billion a year from employees and employers for social security programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. If half of that is the employer’s portion ($409.5 billion), then a yearly cost of up to $95 billion surely represents a tremendous savings to businesses.

Q: What is the average payout expected to be compared with the current system?
A: The answer to this question really depends upon what an individual decides to do once the account becomes their full responsibility at age 31. But for purposes of estimating, let’s assume that the accounts earn an average yearly return of 4.5%, compounded quarterly. (This number is based on average returns for long-term T-Bill investments.) At age 31, each personal account should have a balance of about $52,000. If a person simply left that $52,000 in the same account, growing at that same 4.5% rate, when they begin to draw on that account at age 70, they could expect an annual payout of $21,292 in today’s dollar value. If that same person decided to contribute an extra $1200 per year, their monthly income would increase to $30,652. The current average yearly retirement benefit under Social Security is $11,500.

Q: What about naturalized citizens who were not born here? How would they be covered?
A: Because naturalized citizens share in the hard work of creating the American dream, they too should have a way to benefit from their contributions. In that spirit, a separate but similarly administered fund would be created, funded with up to $1 billion dollars per year, to accommodate our naturalized citizens upon their retirement. This fund would not necessarily be a guarantee though, like the Whole Life Pension Plan. Each naturalized citizen would be required to contribute at least $600 a year for 5 years cumulatively in order to draw a pension. And they must have worked in the U.S. for at least 15 years prior to retirement. We must remember that our retirement program is being designed to reward our citizens for their contributions, not to act as a stimulus for the world’s poor to flood our shores in their golden years.

Q: Would the National Whole Life Pension Plan be guaranteed to all citizens who are born in America?
A: Except in cases of lifetime imprisonment or banishment, each citizen would be able to collect their pension funds upon reaching age 70.

Q: What happens to someone’s account if they die before they can collect?
A: The answer to this question depends upon when the person passed away. If they had not yet begun their working life, or if they were single and had no dependants, then their personal account would be reabsorbed into the general Social Services budget. If, on the other hand, a spouse and/or children survived the person, those survivors would have a claim to the account and could receive a single lump-sum payout, minus a 25% tax, which would be transferred to the general Social Services budget. If they were to die after reaching retirement, the remaining balance would be transferred to their estate for distribution to their heirs.

Q: Who administers these accounts? And if it’s the government, how can we be sure that they won’t just raid this fund like they did the original retirement fund?
A: Initial collection and disbursement of the account funds would be handled by a government administration, but would be subject to strict guidelines and frequent audits. Legislation would be enacted that would forbid inclusion of these retirement funds in any federal budgeting process and no Congress could never leverage another expense on the backs of o
ur retirement accounts. Any attempt to do so by a lawmaker would result in immediate impeachment proceedings, presided over by a combined citizen-judicial-legislative panel. Further, each personal account would be established as a deposit only account, and have a unique unlock code that was time dated for withdrawal activation only at the account holders 70th birthday.

Q: How can the money earn interest if it stays in one place?
A: In a personal bank account, the money you deposit is not physically in a box in the bank. Similarly, the National Whole Life Pension Plan lends out a portion of its balance through the purchase of long-term government bonds. A separate provision requiring the entire balance be available for lump-sum payout at age 70 could be instituted, allowing pensioners to transfer their funds into a private account if they so desired, but the same yearly disbursement requirements would follow.

Q: While this sounds pretty good, could I still invest in supplemental retirement accounts for myself?
A: Absolutely! A wide variety of investment options would still be available to supplement your retirement savings. These programs could have an unlimited, tax-free ceiling for contributions, but would have a graduated tax schedule applied for withdrawals, based on total non-national pension funds or purpose for withdrawal.

Well, that’s pretty much it. The National Whole Life Pension Plan could be a solution to the future insolvency of Social Security’s retirement program. It seems to be considerably more economical for businesses and government to fund and operate, and considerably more lucrative for individuals who will need to live off the funds for 20 or more years. This plan levels the playing field from the beginning, allowing workers to become more focused on the job they do today rather than worry about their retirement benefits, resulting in possibly better worker output and better corporate profit.

The beauty of this plan is that it could begin at any time, since $22.5 billion dollars is just a drop in the bucket of the federal trough. Even in thirty years time when the system is running full blast, the outlay is a mere fraction of what is being spent today. The adoption of this type of plan would also have the immediate effect of securing retirement benefits for future generations, taking that aspect of our current systems breakdown out of the equation and allowing us to concentrate on helping the program limp along until its last recipient has drawn their last benefit check.

(Note: Population figures derived from U.S. Census reports and projections. Current Social Security Administration budget figures derived from the 2006 U.S. Federal Budget. Pension fund estimates used retirement and compound interest calculators found here: http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/retirement_calculator.htm)