INCOMING!

Here we go.…
Were it not for the provision that Pat Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican, put into the Senate’s proposed health care reform, this legislation would be moderately important but hardly momentous. Toomey’s provision, however, makes it this century’s most significant domestic policy reform.
It required tenacity by Toomey to insert into the bill a gradually arriving, but meaningful, cap on the rate of growth of per-beneficiary Medicaid spending. It is requiring of Toomey and kindred spirits strenuous efforts to keep it there, which reveals the Republican Party’s itch to slouch away from its uncomfortable but indispensable role as custodian of realism about arithmetic.
Well, no it doesn’t and he isn’t — that is, being realistic about arithmetic.
The argument in this article is that the expansion in cost is all about “mission creep.” Nonsense.
The facts are that medical spending has gone from ~3-4% of GDP to nearly 20% and continues to accelerate. This of course means that ultimately it would exceed 100%, which is impossible.

This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-07-11.