We estimate that a family affordability rule could initially lead to as many as 1.3 million more workers accessing exchange subsidies for themselves and their families than under a single affordability rule. If employees pay 50 percent of the premiums in the future, this number increases to 6 million.

Based on our reading of the evidence, the Supplemental Security Income-disabled children program has increasingly become a more general welfare program that in large part targets a population of able-bodied single mothers that overlaps with the TANF population.

Changes in Social Security policy have reduced the willingness of employers to provide accommodations and rehabilitation and their workers to seek them by making access to DI benefits much easier for workers and failing to make their employers more directly pay for their movement onto the rolls.

The U.S. disability system is failing--growing at an unsustainable pace for taxpayers and delivering relatively poor outcomes to those with disabilities.

The costs of disability programs are rising at an unsustainable pace. In all likelihood this will produce calls for program reforms. More systematic solutions should be considered, like experience rating SSDI payroll taxes.

Richard Burkhauser of Cornell and Mary Daly of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, coauthors of The Declining Work and Welfare of People with Disabilities (AEI Press, September 2011), offer a "work first" approach that has the potential to shrink caseloads, curb costs, and improve the economic outlook for people with disabilities.

The increase in the minimum wage has actually hurt those who it was intended to benefit.

The rise in income inequality since 1993 has been small.