Fix Healthcare - Don't Fixate on Spending

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The CBPP has some metrics out on the growth of "Government Spending", and the numbers are fascinating.  Ok, not really "fascinating", its pretty obvious stuff, that unfortunately gets drowned out by wingnut shrillery about "deficits", "big government", "starve the beast", blah, blah, blah.

See the chart above?  It basically points out that If you exclude Social Security and Medicare, Government spending has been pretty steadily falling(!)  since 1962.  At worst, worst, it plateaued out or grew slightly during the crazy Bush years (unfunded tax cuts have a way of doing that).
The CBPP puts it best
 The bottom line is that if one measures the size and reach of the government by non-interest spending as a share of GDP, one finds that the government has indeed expanded, but modestly rather than explosively — and that all of the expansion is the result of the impact on Social Security and Medicare of rising health costs and the aging of the population. Federal program spending outside of those two programs is set to decline significantly as a share of GDP when the economy recovers. This is the case even though the continuing increase in health care costs will affect many programs other than Social Security and Medicare: especially Medicaid, veterans' health, military health, and subisidies to help low- and middle-income people afford health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
 So seriously, get over the "Government spending is killing us" rhetoric.  Its *all* about healthcare - it needs some serious fixing.  Other than that, It Just Doesn't Matter.  The next time you hear someone blabber about "Government is the problem", and they aren't referring to healthcare, either ignore them, blow a raspberry, or preferably do both...

Oh, by the way, I dropped Social Security from the discussion because it is not a problem.  Yes its growing, but the fix is really, really trivial (topic for a separate post)

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