The American Spectator

For these reasons, the Ryan plan has drawn support from some unlikely sources, including ultraliberal Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and longtime liberal academic Alice Rivlin, the “godmother of the CBO.”

Basic, fundamental, structural reforms such as these could help make entitlement reform politically feasible and would ultimately reduce government far more than simple slash-and-burn benefit cuts.

Even larger spending reductions could be achieved by allowing workers the freedom to put their Medicare payroll taxes in personal savings and investment accounts. Over an entire working career and assuming only standard, long-term market returns, a participant would accumulate enough capital to pay an annuity roughly three times what his Medicare payroll taxes provide. Seniors could use those annuity payments to further finance their private health insurance. Such a system could, quite possibly, close Medicare’s entire, enormous, longterm financing gulf with no tax increases or further spending reductions.

The accounts would not just trim the growth of Medicare benefits, but also shift all the spending financed through those payroll taxes to private savings, investment, and insurance—which would on its own produce the biggest reduction in government spending in world history.