BROADCASTS.com

b"With James M. Stone, Author, Founder and CEO of Plymouth Rock Assurance Corp., Former Massachusetts Insurance Commissioner

Since we\\u2019re in a Presidential campaign cycle, the problems and challenges of our country are front and center, and we\\u2019re continually bombarded by rhetoric from all sides on how to fix what ails us.
James M. Stone, CEO of Plymouth Rock Assurance Corp, former Massachusetts Insurance Commissioner from 1975 to 1979 and then Chairman and Commissioner of the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, has written a book called Five Easy Theses: Commonsense Solutions to America\\u2019s Greatest Economic Challenges, in which he addresses matters of public policy regarding healthcare, education, inequality, and social security\\u2014those issues that concern all of us.
Jim states at the outset that there are other matters of equal value, both on a national and international level, and he doesn\\u2019t assume to have easy answers across that vast spectrum. The book, instead, focuses on the areas within his level of expertise.
There are two types of federal policies steering the economy, explains Jim: one is the monetary policy resulting from the action of the Federal Reserve\\u2019s manipulating interest rates and the money supply; the other is the fiscal policy that is the product of government spending managed by Congress, which is at the core of Jim\\u2019s message.
Jim believes that the problems around social security have got to be considered sooner rather than later, and the simple solution, as he sees it, is to begin raising the eligibility age now before we arrive at the critical stage. To use his metaphor, \\u201cNow we\\u2019re a speeding car heading toward a brick wall.\\u201d At the inception of Social Security, life expectancy in the United States was only in the 60s, whereas since then, it\\u2019s risen dramatically and is expected to keep on rising. We\\u2019re a much younger older population.
Regarding the high cost of our healthcare, Jim\\u2019s first line of attack is to lower the cost of pharmaceuticals. He makes the alarming statement that \\u201cno other developed nation in the world spends more than about 10% of GNP on healthcare.\\xa0 We spend 18%.\\xa0 That's more than a trillion a year\\u2026 and we are not able to show that we get better infant mortality, better life expectancy, better healthy lifespan, better obesity.\\xa0 We don't get better anything, but we spend over a trillion dollars a year more than we have to.\\u201d
Part of his answer to this problem is to shorten the time span on the patents for these drugs but to have the rest of the world who benefit from our research share in the cost. At the moment, the US shoulders most of that burden.
Right now the overall insanely high cost of healthcare is affected by the enormous amount of paperwork required for different insurers and different programs, as well as sales costs for marketing, which could be greatly reduced if the government were to act as administrator, thereby eliminating much of the paperwork. He cites the statistic that 20% of all healthcare dollars is spent on marketing and administration; most other nations spend 2 or 3%.
Other changes Jim proposes are eliminating many of the subsidies as well as interest deductions.\\xa0 \\u201cIf you add up what the home mortgage deduction and the corporate interest deduction costs, it\\u2019s just about equal to the whole deficit.\\u201d
When Jim discusses income inequality, he says that \\u201cwealth inequality is much more unfairly distributed than income.\\xa0 The wealth numbers are really striking.\\xa0 It appears that in the last 40 years, the United States created more wealth than any other country in the history of the wor..."