Social Insurance - Essay Example

Social Insurance Social insurance is used to fund public programs through the process of taxation which demands that individuals and businesses within a certain income bracket pay a portion of their income to the government. That money is used by the government for several expenditures of which one is the provision of social insurance. The primary benefit of government funding supporting social insurance programs is that the base from which the money for the insurance is derived is tremendously large and may also include all of the citizens in a country which also allows the government to provide social insurance services to nearly all of its citizens.

The drawback is that government funding also means government control which may not be as efficient as private control. In fact, government spending and legislative work on social insurance in America has been criticized by many who think that social insurance programs such as social security, unemployment insurance, workers compensation and Medicare may not be enough for the needs of future Americans. On the other hand, the current situation of these programs allows the government to distribute goods and services to a lot of people who would otherwise have to go without them.

Amendments and changes to the way social insurance programs operate in America have been widely suggested and the government has been pushed to focus on these programs. While the government tries to assure the people that the money they have put into social insurance programs will help them in the future, many individuals believe that the expenses of the government and the current expenditure on the social insurance programs themselves will mean that the trusts guiding the programs will go bankrupt soon.

Works CitedFeldstein, M. 2005, ‘Rethinking Social Insurance’, [Online] Available at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w11250