“A novel way to deal with Medicare’s deteriorating finances is to create Health Insurance Retirement Accounts (HIRAs). Through these accounts current workers will partially prepay future Medicare costs through a fixed percentage of their total wage income and thereby reduce the projected tax burden on future workers, say Andrew J. Rettenmaier and Thomas R. Saving, senior fellows at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Under this reform: * When they enroll in Medicare at age 65, beneficiaries will use their HIRA balances to purchase an annuity paying an annual fixed sum to a spending account. * Beneficiaries will use their HIRA annuities to pay for a share of their Medicare costs and any funds remaining at the end of the year can be withdrawn tax free … and spent on nonmedical goods and services. * The annuities will replace government spending obligations … * The new economic incentives for patients to become more prudent consumers of healthcare will further reduce the funding burden on the next generation by reducing both the level and rate of growth in healthcare spending by retirees.” [Adobe Acrobat .pdf file; editor’s note: With all the push for “Medicare modeled” healthcare reform, it’s sure nice to see someone trying to fix the problems with that monstrosity instead - SAT] (12/23/07)