The Deficit Comes Down to Health Care
Posted at 2:15 p.m. on Nov. 12, 2012
Ezra Klein highlights a new report from the Congressional Budget Office and points out that the bulk of the recent and future growth in federal spending comes from just one sector: health care.
“Spending on Social Security is expected to rise, but not particularly quickly. Spending on everything else is actually falling… 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… So we need to get health-care costs down. But because we can only do that so quickly, we’re also going to need to get taxes up.”
