Tom Emerick
Posted 1/23/12 on Cracking Health Costs
A huge amount of attention is focused on the national debt, and it should be. The real train wreck in the pipeline is Medicare and Medicaid spending.
According to CBO projections, “Total spending on health care would rise from 16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007 to 25 percent in 2025, 37 percent in 2050, and 49 percent in 2082.” Click here for full report. One problem with CBO estimates is they are notoriously optimistic, with actual costs coming in sometimes as much as eight times higher than CBO projections.
Sometime between 2025 and 2050, America’s going to…. Oh well, I’ll let you complete the sentence.
To quote Alan S. Blinder from a WSJ editorial on this topic, “So no, America, we don’t have a generalized overspending problem for the long run. We have a humongous health-care problem.”
Our children and grandchildren will resent our generation, perhaps bitterly, if we let this stand. In time historians will puzzle over why we knew this was coming but failed to act.
Care And Cost 
Is it any wonder why David Walker, former Comptroller General of the U.S. called health care public enemy #1? And, with the tsunami in view, the band plays on with its business-as-usual dirge.