Health and Social Policy

Privatizing Social Security would create an enormous financial bonanza. So guess who’s spending millions to change public perceptions and national policy.

We could afford the dependent baby boomer generation once–during its childhood. We can do it again when the boomers retire.

Emphasizing work and family could revitalize the Democratic Party. But only if progressives seize the moment.

The problem isn’t that old folks get too much money from government — it’s that young families get too little. Recalling the GI Bill and the politics of generational solidarity.

The development of human growth hormone and antidepressants like Prozac has already begun to blur the line between “treating” an illness and “enhancing” an otherwise already healthy person, making it difficult for insurance companies to know how and what to pay for.

A new book by a Harvard Business School professor who wants to reorganize medicine into “focused factories” shows just how scary the medical-industrial complex might become.

Why the elderly are a net asset to society.

Why did the American Medical Association support Newt Gingrich’s proposals on Medicare? Not for the reasons the media suggested.

Marcus Welby was a myth; doctors have always cared about money. But the for-profit managed care industry makes no pretense: It’s offering physicians money to make decisions that are plainly not in the interests of patients.