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Mimi Abramovitz - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • everyone is still on welfare the role of redistribution in social Policy
    Social Work, 2001
    Co-Authors: Mimi Abramovitz
    Abstract:

    Most people have an inaccurate assessment of who is "on welfare." Two decades have passed since Social Work published the original version of this article, which applied Titmuss's framework of a three-tiered social welfare system and showed that nearly "everyone is on welfare." Based on new data and a more in-depth analysis, this article re-examines who benefits from and who pays for social, fiscal, and corporate welfare and concludes that all three welfare systems continue to serve and to favor the middle class, wealthy households, and large corporations. Social workers can work to transform the system from one that rewards power and privilege to one that ensures distributive justice for all. Key words: corporate welfare; fiscal welfare; public assistance; social welfare; tax redistribution Two decades have passed since Social Work published the original version of "Everyone Is on Welfare" (Abramovitz, 1983). The article appeared just as Ronald Reagan launched a historic shift in social welfare Policy. Marked by massive social program cuts, lower income taxes, and higher military spending, his new conservative agenda replaced postwar liberalism with hostility to social welfare programs. To counter the emerging antipathy to the welfare state, "Everyone Is on Welfare" showed that government spending benefited people from all walks of life as well as major corporations. Several trends suggest that the time is ripe to revisit this question of who is "on welfare." First, new and improved data is available from think tanks, advocacy groups, and government agencies that regularly report on the flow of government dollars to various sectors of society. Second, if social work students reflect the norm, few people realize that social welfare programs are not limited to serving poor people. Third, heated public debates over tax cuts, devolution, welfare reform, the privatization of social security and Medicare, and how to spend the federal budget surplus suggest that the policies of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also raise fundamental questions about who pays for and who benefits from government spending. Finally, the frequent appearance of the 1983 version of "Everyone Is on Welfare" on course syllabi and in anthologies suggests the importance of this issue to the profession. Three Welfare Systems The 1983 version of this article was based on a framework developed by the well-known British social Policy Analyst, Richard M. Titmuss. According to Titmuss (1965), our techniques of social diagnosis and our conceptual frameworks have been too narrow. We have, he stated: compartmentalized social welfare as we have compartmentalized the poor. The analytic model of social Policy that has been fashioned on only the phenomena that are clearly visible, direct and immediately measurable is an inadequate one. It fails to tell us about the realities of redistribution which are being generated by the processes of technological and social change and by the combined effects of social welfare, fiscal welfare and occupational welfare. [italics added] (p. 20) Titmuss saw traditional social programs as the tip of the social welfare iceberg of a three-tiered social welfare system. Beneath the surface he found a "fiscal welfare system" that offers income support to individuals and families through the tax code and an "occupational welfare system" that offers similar aid to workers through fringe benefits. Table 1 illustrates how each of the three welfare systems in the United States is "concerned with changing the individual and family pattern of current and future claims on resources set by the market, set by the possession of accumulated past rights and set by the allocation made by Government to provide for national defense and other non-market sectors" (Titmuss, 1965, p. 20). The social welfare system is administered by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development; the fiscal welfare system by the Internal Revenue Service, and the occupational welfare system by individual firms. …

Clare Ulrich - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • when you re 65 medicare managed care is an attractive option for elderly and disabled americans but it may not survive without reform Policy Analyst john cawley proposes a way to make it work more efficiently and fairly
    Human Ecology, 2002
    Co-Authors: Clare Ulrich
    Abstract:

    Ben Franklin recognized that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure long before health maintenance organizations (HMOs) were created with roughly the same principle in mind. HMOs have been around only 25 years, but it has been a tumultuous existence, marked by high hopes for affordable health care as well as accusations of penny-pinching at the expense of patient care. John Cawley, an assistant professor of Policy analysis and management, has been particularly interested in the federal Medicare+Choice (M+C) program. In 1982 Congress targeted managed care as the solution to the problem of rapidly rising Medicare expenditures per beneficiary. It directed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to contract with HMOs to provide managed care for Medicare recipients. For elderly and disabled Americans, M+C represented an alternative to fee-for-service medical care. This alternative was attractive in part because some HMOs participating in the program offered benefits not included in traditional Medicare, such as prescription drug, dental, and optical plans. Retirees with low to moderate incomes who didn't have access to employer-provided health care plans especially welcomed M+C's extra coverage. The M+C program flourished--for a time. A published study of HMO participation in M+C, which Cawley co-authored with Michael Chernew and Catherine Mclaughlin at the University of Michigan, indicates that M+C enrollment grew from 440,000 in 1985 to 6.35 million in 1999. By 2001, however, that enrollment had fallen to 5.6 million, coinciding with a steep decline in the number of HMOs participating in the program. Between 1998 and 2001. HMOs affiliated with M+C decreased from 346 to 174. "As a result of the reduced participation of HMOs, 934,000 elderly and disabled. Americans were involuntarily disenrolled from their managed care plans at the end of 2000." Cawley says. It is estimated that an additional 536,000 were disenrolled at the end of 2001. "These people were forced either to find another HMO in their county with a risk contract from Medicare or return to traditional fee-for-service Medicare." Cawley reports that one-third of the elderly and disabled Americans disenrolled from M+C experienced a decline in benefits, 39 percent bore higher monthly premiums, and one in seven lost prescription drug coverage. "These impacts fell on the most economically vulnerable," he adds, "specifically, those people with lower incomes, less education, and in worse health than other M+C enrollees." According to the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics, health care costs are much higher among lower-income and middle-income households. Health care expenditures also tend to be concentrated among a relatively small group of individuals. Recent statistics reveal that about one percent of Medicare beneficiaries age 65 or older incur approximately 13 percent of the health care expenditures in that age group. The top 5 percent of Medicare enrollees with the highest expenditures incur 37 percent of all health care expenditures. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Life expectancy in the United States has increased dramatically since 1900, and trends predict it will continue to increase. Given these statistics, affordable health care that includes benefits such as prescription drug plans is an issue that is only going to snowball in importance. One hundred years ago, most people did not live past 65. Today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, approximately three-fourths of all deaths occur at ages 65 and older, and children born in the twenty-first century can expect to live into their eighties or more. In addition, modern medical technologies leading to better treatment and prevention of diseases will bring with them a different set of health care problems for seniors and the health care organizations that serve them. …

Devon Herrick - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Robert H Nelson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Confessions of a Policy Analyst
    The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics, 2014
    Co-Authors: Robert H Nelson
    Abstract:

    The government practice of Policy analysis is often conceived to be a value-neutral task in which economic and other professional experts respond to well-defined analytical tasks as defined by their political superiors. This chapter shows that the real world is more complicated. Government Policy Analysts often serve in entrepreneurial roles themselves, seeking to generate top-level attention to pressing Policy issues as seen by the Analyst. It is difficult to separate clearly professional expert and political roles in government. Policy Analysts typically incorporate a strong set of “economic values” into their professional work efforts; they frame Policy options for government decision makers in light of existing political realities. Robert Nelson explores these themes relating to professional economic ethics, drawing on his personal experiences as a career economist from 1975 to 1993 in the Office of Policy Analysis in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior.

  • confessions of a Policy Analyst ethical dilemmas facing economic professionals in government
    2012
    Co-Authors: Robert H Nelson
    Abstract:

    From 1975 to 1993, the author worked as a federal career economist in the Office of Policy Analysis in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior. In this capacity, he was involved in many Interior Department Policy discussions, and was often asked by top Interior officials to contribute both written and oral analyses of leading issues. This paper provides an autobiographical review of the author’s government experiences and Policy impact over those years. It shows that in a politicized agency such as the Interior Department there is no well defined separation between the expert role of a Policy Analyst and the political and other “subjective” sides of Department workings. Policy Analysts such as the author often helped political leadership to “frame” Policy issues in both economic and political terms. They provided important institutional memory. They often also played an entrepreneurial role in suggesting new areas for Policy investigation and potential Policy change. The personal values of the Policy Analyst almost inevitably come importantly into play in these and other tasks -- as well as his or her expert knowledge. The paper explores, based on various personal case studies, how the significant role of personal values can raise ethical issues for the appropriate functioning of a Policy analysis professional in a government setting.

  • Economists as Policy Analysts: Historical Overview
    Policy Analysis and Economics, 1991
    Co-Authors: Robert H Nelson
    Abstract:

    Through the mid-nineteenth century a major task of American colleges was to train students for the ministry; they read Adam Smith and other economists in their study of moral philosophy. In the late nineteenth century, however, higher education acquired a new mission (Bledstein, 1976; Buck, 1965). In the future the university would be the training ground for a scientific elite to manage American society. The social sciences were required along with many other specialized disciplines to provide the technical knowledge to serve this purpose. The role of the economist as Policy Analyst took shape in this era

Charles Edward Snare - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • windows of opportunity when and how can the Policy Analyst influence the Policymaker during the Policy process
    Review of Policy Research, 1995
    Co-Authors: Charles Edward Snare
    Abstract:

    Building on a variety of conceptualizations about the Policymaker, the Policy Analyst, and the Policy process, this essay seeks to understand how these three aspects mesh together. Consequently, this paper attempts to examine four questions that are germane to the analysis of Policy: What roles can the Policy Analyst playq What are the personality types of Policymakersq What is the role of the Policymaker's personality in the Policy processq What are the windows of opportunity for the Policy Analyst in one's attempt to influence the Policymaker during the Policy processq This paper argues that the Policy Analyst has the opportunity to influence Policymakers at various stages of the Policy process. However, the influence strategies that are effective are different depending upon the type of Policymaker. This understanding is vital if a Policy Analyst desires to have an impact. Furthermore, the role the Analyst performs has a significant impact on the how and the extent to which the Analyst may have leverage. Copyright 1995 by The Policy Studies Organization.