The Deficit Problem, in One Graph
There are lots of ways we could get the federal government deficit under control in the short and medium term, if we really needed to. But there is really only one way to control the long-term deficit: to rein in the growth in health spending. Look at this:
The yellow line shooting up is the projected growth of the U.S. budget deficit (as a percentage of GDP) if current health spending trends continue. The light blue line drifting slowly downwards is what our budget outlook would look like if health cost trends in the U.S. were scaled down to match trends in other high-income OECD countries.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research declares, “The U.S. health care system is possibly the most inefficient in the world: We spend twice as much per person on health care as other advanced countries, but we have worse health outcomes, including a lower life expectancy.” If we want to fix the long-term deficit problem, we have to address the problem of exploding health spending. In the long term, there is no other deficit problem.
Via Austin Frakt.
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