The long-term fiscal balance of the United States will be determinedprimarily by the future rate of growth of health care costs,as we have recently noted.1 If costs per enrollee in Medicareand Medicaid continued to grow at the same rate as they haveover the past four decades, federal spending on those two programsalone would increase from about 5% of the gross domestic producttoday to about 20% by 2050 — roughly the share of theeconomy now accounted for by the entire federal budget. Compoundingthe challenge for policymakers is the difficulty of controllingfederal spending . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Dr. Orszag is the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), where Dr. Ellis is a senior analyst. CBO is a nonpartisan agency that provides budgetary and economic analyses to Congress.
An interview with Dr. Orszag can be heard at www.nejm.org.
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