Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Another Problem Obamacare Made Worse

In the Wall Street Journal this morning, Laura Meckler has a must-read article outlining the nation’s skyrocketing spending on health care:

All together, nearly one in four federal dollars is devoured by health-care spending.  That is more than double the 10% of the budget it consumed in 1960, before Medicare and Medicaid were created.  The Congressional Budget Office projects that in just a decade, health care will consume nearly one in three federal dollars, pressuring government spending in other areas, such as infrastructure and the military.  Any deal to avert the fiscal cliff likely would do little to alter this trajectory, meaning pressure from health-care costs likely will continue to weigh on Washington and spur yet more budget wrangling.

As we have previously noted, demographic changes prompted by the impending retirement of the Baby Boom generation, coupled with continually rising health costs, will put a squeeze on the federal fisc for decades to come.  Yet, as the Journal article notes, any supposed “grand bargain” reached in the coming days and weeks “likely would do little to alter” the unsustainable nature of federal health spending, which will “continue to weigh on Washington” – and subsume other important budgetary priorities – for the foreseeable future.

Recall that nearly four years ago, the Obama Administration and its liberal media allies boldly pledged that “health care reform is entitlement reform.”  Those fanciful claims have long since been obliterated, by a law that took over half a trillion dollars from Medicare to fund yet more spending on health care entitlements.  This morning’s article makes plain this Administration’s failed fiscal record – one of skyrocketing spending and mountains of debt, exactly the types of “reform” we don’t need.