New Way to Care (Social Protections that Put Families First)

The COVID-19 pandemic. Obamacare. The Great Recession. The dot-com bust. The early ’90s recession. Every decade or so a disaster hits the United States and reminds us that many American families live one calamity away from financial ruin. But what if there were a better way to help families protect themselves from life’s risks? And what if that way did not require bloated government bureaucracies, increased taxes, and runaway spending and debt?

Fortunately, author, economist, policy entrepreneur, and Independent Institute Senior Fellow John C. Goodman, Ph.D., has forged just such a path.

In New Way to Care: Social Protections That Put Families First, Dr. Goodman offers a bold but practical strategy for giving Americans more control and security over their own finances and destiny, while still promoting—at far less expense—the vital social goals that gave rise to well-intended but failing government safety-net programs.

Here are just a few of the life-risks to which Dr. Goodman—the “Father of Health Savings Accounts,” according to the Wall Street Journal—presents solutions:

• Growing too old and outliving one’s assets
• Dying too young and leaving dependent family members without resources
• Becoming disabled and facing financial catastrophe
• Suffering a major health event and being unable to afford needed medical care
• Becoming unemployed and finding no market for one’s skills.

In New Way to Care, Dr. Goodman invites us to envision smartly crafted social protections that better empower and serve the nation’s families, harmonize individual and societal interests, foster personal responsibility and government accountability, bridge the partisan divide over social spending—and eliminate the risk that America’s safety-net expenditures will drive the U.S. economy over a fiscal cliff. The debate in America over social insurance will never be the same.