The Single Best Graph On What's Driving Our Deficits

It's the rising cost of health care.

Ezra Klein: What these three charts tell you is simple: It’s all about health care. Spending on Social Security is expected to rise, but not particularly quickly. Spending on everything else is actually falling. It’s health care that contains most all of our future deficit problems. And the situation is even worse than it looks on this graph: Private health spending is racing upwards even faster than public health spending, so the problem the federal government is showing in its budget projections is mirrored on the budgets of every family and business that purchases health insurance.

CBO Long-Term Budget Outlook definitions: "The extended baseline scenario generally adheres closely to current law, following CBO’s 10-year baseline budget projections through 2022 and then extending the baseline concept for the rest of the long-term projection period. The extended alternative fiscal scenario incorporates the assumptions that certain policies that have been in place for a number of years will be continued and that some provisions of law that might be difficult to sustain for a long period will be modified."

Comments

[democommie]

The single biggest problem with the U.S. Healthcare system is "entitlerment". And that is not "entitlement" in the sense of the gummint payin' for the welfare kings and queens to have breast and penile enhancement surgeries--or anything else, like actual, "well child" healthcare delivery. The problem is that people see or hear about some drug, surgery or other medical/health practice that is being touted as a panacaea for some form of disease (cardiopulmonary, cancer, kidney) and decideds that THEY should have it.

The cost of delivering advanced healthcare rises in, I think, a direct relationship to its novelty and scarcity.

I'm on the VA Healthcare system and I get a high level of care, including inexpensive prescriptions, with no co-pays. What I don't get is cutting edge therapies for things like acne, hair loss, weight control (stapling) and the like. It's not just that I don't get it. It's not available. You want that shit? Go to a private provider. The level of expertise of VA doctors* (especially reconstructive surgeons) is high. Their system is not being tasked with providing a lot of elective procedures. As well as saving the money for the actual procedures that are NOT performed, the VA does not have to own the infrastructure to support those things.

Single payer is the only way to rein in healthcare costs.

* My VA Hospital in Syracuse is surrounded by other hospitals and right next door to SU. My civilian spinal surgeon, who practices in the area, has done surgeries for the VA (mine was not one of them as I was still on private insurance at the time).