Regarding Benefits: Income, Unemployment, Health, Retirement

Our interpretation of the Singapore model issues all citizens the equivalent of a debit card and credit line for (a) general funds (b) groceries (food), (c) unemployment, (d) health care, (e) retirement. Yearly distributions into these accounts are too difficult to manage for ordinary people, so they will be made monthly or quarterly. These accounts are inviolable and cannot be attached for debt collection nor used as collateral. They insure the public against each citizen’s incapacity and therefore insure the people against moral hazard. They cut out all the ‘middle man’ administrative costs that have so dramatically driven up prices. All these accounts accumulate interest.

1 – In times of crisis the treasury, as we recently experienced, can immediately distribute funds directly to citizens without delay. These funds can be delivered to a general account and used for any purpose.

2 – Redistribution: In times of windfall profits for the state, those profits can be distributed directly to the people in any combination of those accounts, whether to pay down the credit line for home, vehicles, or increase spending, or increase retirement savings.

3 – Unemployment funds can accumulate redistributions, can accumulate voluntary contributions, and be drawn down upon, and subsidized if necessary, but they are, at the very least, manageable.

4 – The demand for healthcare has been stalled because the right wants to preserve market competition for service, so that people who can afford to can continue to fund innovations, and the left wants to end market competition for service, and drag down overall quality in pursuit of equality (out of envy) at the cost of ‘death panels’.

As such the solution to the problem is centralizing purchasing and credit, issuing health insurance accounts in the Singapore model, and re-privatizing the healthcare industry into non-profits, with financing provided by the treasury, so it is no longer friendly to investors, finance, and administration, while hostile to care professionals, care providers, and patients.

This involves health accounts at the treasury for all citizens; nationalization of a set of insurance companies through majority ownership to serve as mixed private-public services, and an emphasis on care, not investments – since all insurance companies are investment houses with ‘fronts’ providing insurance. These accounts will function just like savings accounts. Some copay is necessary to preserve incentives not to abuse the system. Everyone will have majority subsidy of care costs and full insurance against catastrophes, thereby ending medical bankruptcy, but requiring cautious use of resources.

So we will get universal health care, we will remove the profit motive, but we will not follow the Europeans into abandoning the extraordinary value of markets. (People with money have no time – that’s why they have money. People with time have no money. We have to satisfy both ends of the spectrum and everyone in between.) (Note that elsewhere we also repatriate all strategic medical manufacturing across the spectrum across the entire supply chain.)

5 -The demand for retirement funds increases and is all but unsustainable. So we want to put this back under control of the individual on one hand, and make sure those who lack ‘judgement and foresight’ are protected from their own impulses on the other.

As such these accounts will be contributed to monthly or quarterly. They cannot be attached nor used as collateral. These funds are savings, not promises to money that don’t exist as today. All contributions to these accounts are tax-free both on input and output. You can for example, sell your home, deposit the entire value tax free, up to one hundred times the median income, at which point the account is ‘full’ (to prevent abuses by the very wealthy). You cannot draw on this for any reason other than retirement.

As such your retirement savings are under your control and you are no longer dependent on politics for your retirement income. Also note: these retirement funds are inheritable.

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