Bending The Cost Curve

Richard Posner's take on health care reform:

The national debt this year will almost equal the Gross Domestic Product (true, the "public" debt--debt owed to entities outside the federal government--is lower than the overall national debt, but the debt owed the social security trust fund, for example, is a real measure of likely future fiscal obligations), and it will continue to soar at least until the economy, and with it federal tax revenues, recover. But it probably it will soar beyond that because the Bush Administration established a precedent of $500 billion annual federal budget deficits that the Obama Administration will follow and probably raise. The health-care reform wending its way through Congress will expand benefits without, it now appears, controlling costs. It is a misfortune that Congress didn't begin with trying to control costs, and then consider whether the nation can afford to expand benefits.

The Congress of the United States is clearly incapable of running a balanced budget - under Democrats just as much as under Republicans. And the president of the United States, even with the legitimate allowance of greater debt necessary to counter the Great Recession, has no long term plans to fix it. The US is going under - because its political system is as bankrupt as its finances.