Medicare costs

With everyone talking about how to lower the deficit, has any pundit or network talking head mentioned that health care costs have stopped rising at twice the rate of other spending?

Which means that projected Medicare spending for the next 10 years has dropped by about $500 billion dollars.  Half a trillion in savings already and no cut to benefits needed.

Do you think they’ll stop insisting that cuts are the only way to go, and need to be done now?

Me neither; just like I don’t expect them to stop acting as if Social Security increases the deficit (it doesn’t).

Somebody get me a Santayana clue stick

During the Great Depression, the FDR administration began some serious programs to bring the country out of the economic hole that it was in. The plan worked. Then in 1937 conservative pressure lead to a reduction in the spending that had been so successful. The result was a drop in the recovery that was only fixed by increasing spending.

Today, the Obama administration and Congress are talking about cutting spending and reducing the deficit. These are the same mistakes made in 1937, only this time we haven’t had more than three years of serious economic growth to help us first.

So this time around we get the same mistakes with none of the benefits.

Deficits

I'll say it again - Social Security does not, will not and by law can not increase the deficit. Not by a single cent.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.