Healthcare spending on it's current track is set to consume 2 trillion out of a roughly 3.54 trillion annual federal budget within 5 years. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231928 "the Federal Government spent $1,417 billion last fiscal year on Medicare and Medicaid, up from $380 billion in 1998, which incidentally was 37% of all federal spending last year -- and it's accelerating at ~8-9% a year as it has been for the last several decades (with some notable outlying years.) At this rate it will cross $2,000 billion, or more than half (by a good margin) of the current federal budget within 5 years. That will blow a $600 billion additional annual deficit hole in the budget into a rising rate environment which the government will not be able to finance. That's math, not politics." |