But we don’t have a “generalized problem of runaway spending…that requires cuts across the board” to fix the federal deficit, according to former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal.
He cites long-term CBO projections that the primacy deficit (which excludes interest payments) will bottom out at 2.6% of GDP in 2018 and then rise to 7.4% by 2040. The entire increase will come from rising healthcare costs. Notes Blinder:
We have a huge problem of exploding health-care costs, part of which show up in Medicare and Medicaid spending.
Other “deficit myths,” Binder argues, include the notions that Americans are demanding deficit reduction like never before (they’re not, he says) and that the deficit problem is so acute it requires immediate spending cute despite the bad economy (it isn’t, he says).
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Yes, we definitely have exploding health care costs, and it is strictly due to the cost of uncompensated care desperately trying to be compensated by fewer and fewer payers. When our government finally gets OUT of the health care business, and each of us starts paying for our own health care needs, watch our health care costs dramatically drop.
The more free health care that is handed out by unfunded government mandates, the more freeloaders will gobble it up and stick the rest of us with the bill. Stop handing out free health care, and suddenly health care will be affordable for everyone. Access to health care will never be a problem – all you have to do is pay for it.
Do poor people buy a tiny amount of care, and try to make do?
Yes! Most people don’t need a lot of health care, what they need is the incentive and discipline to live a healthy lifestyle. Why do I have to always be financially punished for doing the right things, while the people doing the wrong things are rewarded? I’m more than willing to help those that need it temporarily, but I don’t want to keep blindly throwing money at people that will never change because being a parasite is an easy life.