We Can't Solve Our Problems by Balancing the Budget
Posted at 10:15 a.m. on Feb. 1
Matthew Yglesias makes the case that while entitlement spending is driving the large projected national debt, “the issue is all about spending money on old people and not about debt or deficits.”
“Futzing with program design doesn’t change the fact that the elderly are growing as a share of the population and that the elderly require quite a bit of health care services. Things like pushing 66-year-olds off Medicare and into the private insurance market don’t really address the issue, which is that the real capacity of the economyto provide these services needs to increase.”
“Taxpayers don’t need to foot the bill for the whole thing, but the whole medical infrastructure is very bound up with public policy and something has to be done.”
