Deficit panel to tackle worries of federal debt, including health spending

The New York Times reports that President Obama's appointment of a special panel to study the nation's debt will come "(a)fter decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning."

The system "has Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security costs growing at unsustainable rates and an inefficient tax system that cannot keep up" as well as a global recession and trillions in lost tax revenues to deal with, The Times reports. Obama has named former Republican Senate leader Alan Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, to the 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Calmes, 2/16).

The Washington Post: "While deficits are projected to decline as the economy recovers from recession, they are projected to soar again by the end of this decade as retiring baby boomers tap into the entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare." Democrats hope that inclusion of Simpson on the panel will spur Republicans to participate in the panel that will likely try to forge a bipartisan consensus to raise taxes and cut programs to get the deficit under control (Montgomery, 2/17).

Finally, the St. Petersburg Times reports that a statement Vice President Joe Biden made on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that "(a)mong the money spent on health care in the United States, '46 cents on every dollar spent is through Medicare and Medicaid'" is "half true". He was not careful in contextualizing his statement, however, the St. Petersburg Times reports. "According to (a) CBO report, federal spending on Medicare made up 21 percent of total U.S. health care expenditures in 2007, and the federal share of Medicaid spending represented 9 percent of U.S. health care expenditures." Other expenditures come in the form of state and local spending, veterans' care, military care and the state Children's Health Insurance Program (Jacobson, 2/17). .

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.