Goal 1: Production of a Citizen's Handbook
People need to know and understand their government,
and a good way is through what we can
call a "Citizen's Handbook," which explains all aspects
of government spending, complete with pie graphs and
charts. Just as every shareholder in a company gets
detailed reports of the company, every American has a
right to a book that gives us the information we need to
truly understand our government. It could be written by
a public or private group, and in fact it's a real
business opportunity. Just as some companies produce
Alumni books for schools and colleges, a company could
produce handbooks for towns, cities and states. Everyone
should have one such book for their
hometown, state, and federal government.
Goal 2: Reduce the High School
Drop-Out Rate
The drop-out rate in Boston and a number of other Massachusetts
cities is almost 30 %, and about 20% in New Hampshire,
our neighbor to the north. Boston is now among one of
the most violent cities in the country, and much of this
is due to the high drop-out rate. Clearly, the issue is
students not seeing a correlation between what they
learn in school and making it in the world. Improving the situation has to address
multiple aspects of policy, some of which are
below.
1. Greater utilization and expansion of
vocational education 2. Teach basic
mortgage and finance knowledge. 3. Subject
Assessment Tests can can help raise standards, and
make a high school diploma really mean something,
although they
can be optional. 4. Better language learning
materials and specific goals like those at language
schools, can assure that students who take a language
for five years speak it., as well as help immigrants learn English
faster.
The best
policies in housing and health care can also encourage young people to stay in
school and try to become part of the system. These and
many other points are explained in depth in Ideas for
America 1.
Goal 3: Affordable, High Quality
Health Care
The nine causes of the increase in the price of health
care: 1. The use of sophisticated, expensive
medical equipment. 2. New, higher priced prescription
drugs and increased demand induced by drug manufacturers
advertising. 3. Excessive and arguably unnecessary
procedures, including duplication of tests and use of
technologies that yield similar results. 4. Increasing
elderly population, which use medical care more
intensely than younger people. 5. Increasing number of
accidents and other incidents that require emergency
medical services. 6. Labor intensiveness and earnings
growth for health care professionals and executives. 7.
Malpractice Insurance. 8. Administrative waste. 9.
Fraud.
Dealing with the issue means addressing all
nine causes. Ideas for America 1 responds four and seven
directly, and all nine
indirectly. Medical Malpractice Reform deals with
cause seven, and A Medical Shopping Database, can deal
with all nine causes indirectly, as
consumers can comparison shop, which will cause competition and
thus keep prices
down.
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