The Galactically Huge Health Care Non-Emergency

Dean Baker:

NYT's box on "issues holding up debt ceiling agreement" ...tells readers that:

"Officials have said that the program, which provides health care to people 65 and older, is not sustainable in its current form."

This is not true. There is no, as in zero, none, official document that says the program is not sustainable in its current form. There are official documents that show the program will need additional revenue at some point. The ACA passed by Congress last year reduced the projected shortfall in the program by more than 75 percent.

As it stands, the projected shortfall over the program's 75-year planning horizon is less than 0.4 percent of GDP. This is less than one quarter of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.