A message to friends of social insurance: wake up!

Theodore Marmor and Jerry Mashaw effectively present the case for social insurance as a necessary component of capitalism. They understate the severity of the fiscal pressures to which Social Security and Medicare will be subject. Projected cost increases are too large to be met entirely by tax increases that the American public is likely to tolerate. Those who are devoted to social insurance need to design the changes, instead of leaving the job to opponents of principles of social insurance, who will take the financial problems as an excuse to scuttle Social Security and Medicare.