Financial crisis

If you think the financial markets are in trouble, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The upcoming Medicare crisis will dwarf what we’re going through now:

Whereas the newly-burst mortgage bubble has left us with an unfunded liability of merely (we think) something less than $2 trillion, our unfunded liability for Medicare alone, over the next several decades, is estimated to be between $25 trillion and $55 trillion. Considering the fatal damage our current, relatively trivial financial crisis apparently came within a few hours of triggering, this sounds like a lot of money.

I wonder how the government will bail us out of that one?

Well, they can’t. As DrRich points out, health care rationing will come one way or another. Saying “no” to tests and treatments will soon be forced upon all of us, whether we like it or not.

I suggest that our leaders try to soften the blow in the coming years by first reining in unnecessary testing.

Related posts:

1. Chronic Disease: The Financial Crux Of The Healthcare Crisis
2. Health care financing crisis
3. Safety-net hospital financial woes
4. Should health care be bailed out?
5. 85 trillion dollars
6. Medicare already rations care
7. What would happen if HSAs were applied to Medicare?

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Tagged as: Medicare