It’s The Health Care Costs, Stupid
Get this straight:
If health-care costs were rising at the same rate as inflation — even with our aging population — we wouldn’t have a budget problem.
Congressional Budget Office:
The red line is what Medicare plus Medicaid would look like in that scenario.
So, for all you Democrats whining about how Obama should have tackled the short-term economy (or something else) first (forget the Republicans; they’re not interested in reason), STFU!
He did the responsible, prudent, thing: right out of the starting gate, he tackled the long-term elephant in the room — the beast that presidents have been failing to grapple with at least since Nixon (he tried, somewhat halfheartedly, failed).
It remains to be seen whether it will work (and — how will we know?). But he did the brave thing, at great political cost.
Here’s hoping your children and grandchildren will have reason to give thanks even if you haven’t.
Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator. (Click the “Show CBO Data” button.)
I think Obama’s biggest mistake with HC is not that he concentrated on it out of the gate, but that his administration ceded the initial writing of it to congress. While congress would have torn anything submitted to shreds and rewritten it anyway, his administration would not have appeared as tepid or rudderless as it did. The debate would have started out on his terms.
@Chris T
While I agree with you, I really have to question whether I’ve got more political and legislative savvy than Rahm Emmanuel…
Granted, although if there is one thing the Bush administration taught us, sometimes our leaders really are clueless.
If health-care costs were rising at the same rate as inflation — even with our aging population — we wouldn’t have a budget problem.
If people were willing to switch from prime rib, to chop meat, to pasta and beans with their health care, health-care costs would probably be rising at a rate comparable to inflation.
Art
Is that really the (only?) problem? How to explain other countries (their cost curves, putting aside other issues)? I don’t think they’re reverting to beans and rice…
It’s the constant medical testing that creates the excessive costs—when you have a disease it’s like when you lost your keys, nail clippers, or remote control. You gotta search the entire house for the MF’er. It’s a high cost operation no matter how you slice it, unless you choose to cost it another way than time and money. Then you get into drug representatives bribing doctors to prescribe drugs that were questionable for use the very day and subsequent the FDA approved them……. it’s madness….
If the cost of all those tests were going up at the same rate as consumer inflation, we still wouldn’t have the compounding increases we face now.