CYA BLOG

ARCHIVES :: September, 2009

  • CYA Leaders Speak at Impact Academy During Summer

    This summer, CYA's Mike Tully and Yoni Gruskin traveled to the nation's capital to speak at the Impact Academy summit, hosted by America's Promise Alliance and the Peterson Foundation. Mike and Yoni introduced a screening of the 30-minute version of I.O.U.S.A. Following the film, the two CYA board members took questions for over an hour from an audience that included high school students from all parts of the country. The audience showed great concern over the future of America's finances, and expressed great enthusiasm for holding politicians accountable for creating a sustainable future. Impact Academy was a positive and encouraging step towards CYA's goal of educating America's youth about the national debt and the consequences it will have for our generation.

    To see pictures fromt the event, Click here.

    by Concerned Youth of America Staff on 9/22/2009
  • CYA Leaders Attend YES During Summer

    Yoni and I attended the second Youth Entitlements Summit (http://www.age-usa.org/) in Washington, D.C., on June 15 & 16. YES is, according to their website, “a non-ideological coalition of youth organizations and individual activists dedicated to giving youth a voice in the urgent restructuring of our federal health and retirement policies. Our goal is to find common ground in the search for pragmatic, generationally fair reforms.”

    The first day of the event featured panel discussions by distinguished persons with an expertise in generational entitlements issues. Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Honorable James R Jones, Former Congressman and Chairman of the House Budget Committee, served as co-chairs of the event. Speakers included David Walker, President & CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and Former Comptroller General of the United States; Hon. Bill Thomas, Former Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee (R-CA); Isabel Sawhill, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; Jagadeesh Gokhale, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute; and many others.

    Yoni joined me for the second day, which was held at a hotel near the Capitol. The second day had more of a workshop feel as we explored ways of using the internet effectively, how to use visual media, mobilize volunteers, and other strategies for non-profits. Maya Enista, the CEO of Mobilize.org, Jeff Thiebert, the National Field Director of the Concord Coalition, and Matt Stempeck, the Internet and New Media Director of YouStreet were just three of the speakers. The attendees also had time to put our heads together and think of some new strategies. CYA's eLEMONate the DEBT project got some great input from other people that were present as Yoni explained the idea to them.

    On the whole, YES was a great chance for me to get re-energized about this issue, see Yoni, and spend some time with other young people that run nonprofits and care about our issue: fiscal sustainability.

    by Martin Serna on 9/22/2009
  • CYA's September 2009 Healthcare Brief

    Of the many unfunded liabilities that threaten to damage the quality of living for future American generations, the current health care morass is perhaps the most important for our lawmakers to try to fix. According to the National Coalition on Health Care, national health spending will likely reach $2.5 trillion by the end of 2009, taking up 17.6% of U.S. GDP. This number is expected to nearly double in the next decade, while American families continue to struggle with high health insurance premiums. According to an article in Health Matrix magazine, approximately 1.5 million families lose their homes every year because they can’t pay their mortgages as a result of extravagant medical costs. Health care costs threaten to strangle the American government as Medicare and Medicaid costs only continue to skyrocket every year.

    While the solutions to this problem are not simple, and advocates for small and large government solutions passionately argue for their respective sides, CYA would like to call for the passage of a final bill that:

    1.Lowers the burden of exorbitant health care costs on all Americans.
    2.Puts the government in a position to pay for its healthcare-related liabilities by raising taxes now, or trimming benefits, as necessary.
    3.Guarantees that future generations of Americans will be able to enjoy a quality of life consistent or higher than that which previous generations have enjoyed

    As the inheritors of the American Experiment, we want our leaders to know that our generation will hold elected officials responsible if they do not craft a bill that adequately meets these concerns. Any half-hearted attempt by Congress to meet these problems head on will only delay the inevitable, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is that our generation will pay the price for the errors of the current generation in power.

    According to the national coaltion on healthcare:

    •National health spending will reach $2.5 trillion by the end of this year, accounting for 17.6% of U.S. GDP
    -By 2018, national health care spending is expected to reach $4.4 trillion
    -National health expenditures will rise by 6.2% annually, while GDP is expected to rise by only 4.1% annually
    •Within 3 years, Medicare/Medicaid will account for 50% of national health spending
    •According to one study, of the $2.1 trillion the U.S. spent on health care in 2006, nearly $650 billion was above what we would expect to spend based on the level of U.S. wealth versus other nations
    •Over the last decade, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have increased 119 percent
    •Employees have seen their share of job-based coverage increase at nearly the same rate during this period jumping from $1,543 to $3,354
    •The cumulative increase in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have raised at four times the rate of inflation and wage increases during last decade
    •The average employer-sponsored premium for a family of four costs close to $13,000 a year, and the employee foots about 30 percent of this cost
    •Total health insurance costs for employers could reach nearly $850 billion by 2019. Individual and family spending will jump considerably from $326 billion in 2009 to $550 billion in 2019
    •The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that job-based health insurance could increase 100 percent over the next decade
    •Employer-based family insurance costs for a family of four will reach nearly $25,000 per year by 2018 absent health care reform.
    •Economists have found that rising health care costs correlate with significant drops in health insurance coverage, and national surveys also show that the primary reason people are uninsured is due to the high and escalating cost of health insurance coverage.
    •A recent study found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were linked to medical expenses. Of those who filed for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance.
    •According to another published article, about 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs
    •Without health care reform, small businesses will pay nearly $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years in health care costs for their workers, 178,000 small business jobs will be lost by 2018 as a result of health care costs, $834 billion in small business wages will be lost due to high health care costs over the next ten years, small businesses will lose $52.1 billion in profits to high health care costs and 1.6 million small business workers will suffer “job lock“— roughly one in 16 people currently insured by their employers

    Sources:

        http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

        10. Robertson, C.T., et al. “Get Sick, Get Out: The Medical Causes of Home Mortgage Foreclosures,” Health Matrix, 2008.

    by Prateek Kumar on 9/22/2009
  • CYA Summer 2009 Newsletter

    CYA's Summer 2009 Newsletter is now available for viewing on the web. Courtesy of Scribd, a social publishing community.

    To view the newsletter in full screen, click the button in the upper right hand corner of the document viewer. To save the document onto your local computer, click More > Save Document.

    by Concerned Youth of America Staff on 9/20/2009