Free Essay: Policy Analysis on Social Security

Social security fall among the most effective support program in the United States. Social security plays a critical role in seeing that elderly mortality is reduced. It is evident that with implementation of these policies, benefits are realized as health status, and income support programs will reduce existing social disparities (). This paper will be able to lay out an analysis of social security policies in society and how relevant the policies are to the community.

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Social Protection Policy

The review by Arno, House, Viola, and Schechter (2011) on social security and mortality portrays income support as a critical policy in the society in reducing health and social disparities within the community. In their study, most of the death and diseases burden recorded in the United States are greatly linked with poverty and low socioeconomic life (Amo et al., 2011). Income support policy falls within the Social Protection program which is established under social security act 1935. The program targets survivor, disabled, and old age individuals by providing insurance to them. The social protection act was adopted in 2012 by the International Labor Conference for benefits and healthcare provision. Before the adoption of these policy, over 5 billion individuals did not have sufficient security hence there was a large disparity between different classes of people. Although the policy was adopted in 2012, more attention by the international labor conference was in 2013.

The social protection program objective to reduce inequality and disparity targets disables, survivors, families, and workers. The policy will be affected through insurance companies that are to be funded by the federal government. Because the objective of the policy is unbiased, they are legally right and democratically just.

Early Retirement Pension Policy

The introduction of early retirement pension policy in Denmark on first January 2020 will allow for people with long working career and a working capacity dismissal to receive pension (Pedersen et al., 2020). The policy will thus allow individuals who are not able to work more than 15 hours within seven days to be given pension. The pension policy was approved on 20th December 2019 but came into action in January 2020. Before the introduction of these policy, only individual eligible for these pensions were to attain an age of 63 year. The key objective of implementing this policy was to replace the Senior Disability Pension which was more difficult to qualify (Pedersen et al., 2020).

Pedersen et al. (2020) suggested that these policy formation was necessitated by an increased number of individuals who are working for less than 15 hours within seven days and the strictness to meet the qualification for senior pension. The policy approximates over 30000 individuals who will benefit from the program. Historically, the development of this policy in Denmark started on September 2017 as a pension program covering private and public systems. The 2019 pension plan covered a deep observation of pension issues relating to non-standard work (temporal and part-time). Challenges encountered in these works propagated the desire to design policies for non-standard employees. The policy program will work through personal social insurance and assistant programs. The program thus covers all citizens legally residing in Denmark including legal refugees (Pedersen et al., 2020). The social security cover is funded fully by employers.

Since the objective of this policy is to benefit the general population including non-standard workers, it meets its target because achieving a senior disability pension is hard for the population. The policy is expected to meet and serve Denmark's population by improving the living standard of people until 2060 thus reducing inequality and disparity.

Survival Benefit Plan

The defense department implemented a benefit plan for eligible recipients in case the recipients are diseased or retired in the service (Burrelli, & Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division 2004). The policy "Survival Benefit Plan" was enacted in 1972 with a key objective of ensuring that survivors after retirement will have an income. Later on, the program was expanded covering military individuals who may die in retirement and also those who have attained retirement eligibility. Over the years the policy was expanded to cover individuals who perished in the service. The policy working can be altered by the beneficiary withholding their benefits to support the designated beneficiary.

Burrelli et al. (2004) suggested that this policy (SBP) was enacted as a replacement of the Retired Serviceman family protection plan. The serviceman family protection relied much on funding from working military working personnel and the unknown amounts of benefits was a hindrance to personal future planning. Consequently, the new policy founded in 1972 focused on survivor's annuity which is a cost-shared benefit funded by the federal government and the military service. The policy affects over 273596 survivors living in the United States. Benefits and coverage highly depend on the individual status either; reserve retiree, active duty retiree or diseased (Burrelli et al., 2004). The policy goal is to replace family man protection plan which did not provide the personnel with a planned future. This objective is legal for it does not break any law of the United States; besides it targets the survivors in the military service who shares their benefit with eligible recipients. In doing so, equality within the society is achieved thereby reducing disparity gaps.

Medicare Statute policy

The Medicare statute policy was first signed in to the law on 30 July 1965 during the reign of President Lyndon Johnson at the Harry Truman presidential library in independence Missouri (Foote, 2003). However, the first white house conference on aging was held on the January of 1961 which was led by president Dwight D. Eisenhover in which setting up of a health care program was first proposed. Later in 1965 a Medicare under XVII of the social security acts was enacted whose role was provision of health insurance citizens of age 65 and over without considering their medical history or salary.

Foote (2003) review suggested that, before introduction of Medicare policy, it was estimated that on 60% of the people over 65 years were covered by health insurance. There was a great need for the formulation of this Medicare policy since health insurance cover was barely affordable to people of this age group of over 65 years. Generally older people were charged as much as thrice the amount paid for an insurance cover by younger people. Therefore, there was a problem in the health of the aging population that needed fixing and the best solution to this problem was formulation of this Medicare policy. Medicare has been operational for more than half a century providing health insurance to many American families thus improving these family's well-being and saving lives (Foote, 2003). The goal of these policy majorly was to eradicate the problem that was facing disable and older adult in care provision. To be ensure that eligible individuals are insured, the funding originates from the federal government channeled from individual taxes. Since, its implementation majority of the old and eligible people in the society have been medically insured hence this program served its purpose. Besides, since the program does not clash with any known law, it can be said to be legal, just, and consistent with social security work.

Unemployment benefits policy

This is also referred to as unemployment insurance (Lalive, 2007). It is where authorized bodies make payments to the unemployed individuals, usually, benefits are compulsory and are no tax is applied on individual citizen (Lalive, 2007). In most cases these compensations are small and are meant to cover basic needs only, individuals who apply for these benefits must be registered as unemployed and conditioned to seek work and they must have been laid off on previous employment and not fired.

According to Lalive, (2007), the unemployment benefit scheme was first introduced in United Kingdom by the national insurance act 1911, during the reign of H. H. Asquith. This scheme was funded by a fixed amount from every employer, worker and taxpayers, benefits of this scheme allowed a worker to be eligible of a payment of seven shillings in a week for 15 weeks within a year, by the year 1912 the unemployment benefit scheme had 2.3 million beneficiaries.

The unemployment insurance scheme spreaded to most European countries after the Second World War, however it reached the United States in 1932. The social security act of 1935 allowed the federal government of the United States to adopt of unemployment insurance plans. Eligible workers were paid as high as $783.00 and as low as $235.00 in Massachusetts and Mississippi respectively, however conditions were stipulated that the beneficiary must not have lost their job due to misconduct or quitting previous job with no good cause and such employees were no eligible for this benefit plan. The standard compensation period was a maximum of six months of unemployment or an extension of 73 weeks during economic downturns. The application process is done through the state unemployment agency after employee is found eligible benefits payments roll in within two weeks from the day of application (Lalive, 2007). This policy was meant to aid in assisting individuals who were not employed serving the purpose of bring equality within the society. Since the policy is of benefit to the society, attending more than 2.3 million individuals, eligible population and the society has seen its usefulness.

Child Protection Policy

The children act was introduced to protect children and young persons during early the 20th century (Mason, 2005). The law was then consolidated into a single law Children and young person act 1933. This act defines child abuse and child neglect as I known and understood today in the context of a child's safety, health, and happiness. In the year 1989 original act was revised to children act 1989 which acted as an umbrella for state's health, education, welfare, employment, and education of children.

The review by Mason (2005) showed that, its legislation brought about better changes on how children are treated and raised in the contexts of child labor, endangerment, and infanticide. Child abuse (physical child abuse, child sexual abuse, neglect and psychological abuse), parental responsibility, child trafficking, children with disabilities, children victims of female genital mutilation and street children were among the areas to be enforced by this policy. These are among many more areas where children have their rights not respected therefore there was an urge of formulate of children act that could redefine children's rights and at the same time draw the line between adulthood and childhood.

According to Mason (2005, the child act 1933 had important legislative changes that affected the welfare and how the children are treated by the law. For instance, execution raised to 18 years from 16, criminal responsibility age raised to 8 years from 7, minimum working age was now set at 14 years, minimum age of smoking was set at 16 years however this has been amended to 18 years in 2007, alcohol was prohibited to be sold to persons under the age of 16 which was later raised to 18 year other notable legislations that have been put into place since the children act 1933 are 18 years restriction in gambling, development of PEG on video content creators and films there preventing abuse of content by children.