The Challenge of Rising Health Care Costs — A View from the Congressional Budget Office

The long-term fiscal condition of the United States has been largely misdiagnosed. Despite all the attention paid to demographic challenges, such as the coming retirement of the baby-boom generation, our country's financial health will in fact be determined primarily by the growth rate of per capita health care costs. Yet discussions of Medicare and Medicaid policy as well as broader health care reforms have not seriously addressed the issue of how to slow growth in spending. Instead, recent debates have focused on how much to increase spending for the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, how to expand coverage for children, and how . . .