My brother offers up some inconvenient truths:
Why are both parties declaring war on Medicare when both know that it could lead to their own political annihilation? The reason is simple. While both Democrats and Republicans fear the wrath of the AARP and the exploding ranks of hard-pressed seniors—to say nothing of lobbies like the American Hospital Association—Medicare’s relentless squeeze on the budget seems to party leaders to give them no choice but to attack the program’s spending regardless of the political cost. Medicare’s ever-expanding claims on the treasury threaten to crowd out nearly every other priority on either party’s agenda, from bullet trains and decent public schools to, yes, avoiding future tax increases and draconian cuts in the military.
The U.S. wouldn’t even face a structural deficit, much less have to endure the downgrading of its credit rating, were it not for the cost of Medicare (and, to a lesser extent, Medicaid). Just the projected increase in the cost of these two programs over the next twenty years is equivalent to doubling the Pentagon’s current budget, and there is no end in sight after that. By contrast, Social Security will rise only gradually, from 4.8 percent of GDP to 6.1 percent in 2035, and then taper off as the large Baby Boom generation passes. Meanwhile, according to the same CBO projection, all other government programs—the military, the courts, farm subsidies, Amtrak, infrastructure spending, education, and so on—are on course to shrink dramatically as a share of the economy, from 12.3 percent of GDP in 2011 to 8.5 percent in 2035. As others have observed, the federal government is not so gradually being transformed into a giant, and insolvent, health insurance company.
We can at least be thankful that both parties are sane enough to recognize the problem and brave enough to offer politically courageous proposals to solve it. But here’s the bad news: neither side’s solution is likely to work.
His solution? Get rid of fee-for-service medicine.
