patients' bill of rights with the right to sue. Add a prescription benefit to Medicare, and lock away $435 billion to ensure that it stays solvent. IMPACT: More children would be insured through the CHIP program, but only if states improve their record of implementing the plan. The prescription benefit would reach all seniors, but nothing is done to reform Medicare and trim its long-term costs, which could eventually bankrupt the program. SOCIAL SECURITYPLAN: Use the entire Social Security surplus and other revenues to pay down the $3.5 trillion national debt by 2012, then devote the savings in interest payments (more than $200 billion annually) to Social Security. Give workers matching funds to encourage them to build their own private savings accounts. IMPACT: Should extend the program's solvency through 2054, and will encourage private saving. But the plan exacerbates the long-term problem: an increasingly large share of tax dollars that must be spent on Social Security benefits. --By Mitch Frank and Andrew Goldstein ...
