He has a friend who is so very excited about last week's events, and shared a link the to BBC's announcement.
It has a nifty chart embedded, showing the growth in medical costs in the US, and then comparing them to other nations' stats. Very nifty, very informative, very seducing to someone who doesn't have a grasp of history.
(You'll have to hit the link to see it, it won't lift out directly.)
It shows health care spending (and inflation) on a moon shot since about 1970. Things happen for a reason. So, what happened shortly before the moon shot?
Well, Lyndon Johnson, that paragon of statesmanship, signed a bill into law establishing Medicare, promising it wouldn't cost very much, and that it would save us money over time. At about the same time, Medicaid was mandated at the state level, with the same promises. Anyone who objected was heartless and stupid. Lawyers discovered that there was money to be made in medical malpractice litigation. The doctors' insurers started charging premiums to reflect the new realities. Then, as a result of deficits run up by Washington, trying to run a welfare state, a war in Vietnam, and keeping the lid on in places like Europe and Korea, there was a run on the US Treasury's gold supply. Nixon felt obliged to abandon the gold standard, and we went to a fiat currency. A general inflation, lasting for over a decade, erupted. No restraints ever were placed upon either government spending or medical litigation. Inflation abated in other sectors, never in the health-care sector, because that part of the economy was now effectively under the sway of Congresses and White Houses, all looking toward the next election.
Moon shot!!
Of course, none of that info is in the BBC chart.
Here's another chart, courtesy of Karl Denninger:
Another, more serious moon shot. And, in reality, the first one helped in great part create the second.
My Facebook friend is young and idealistic. He would have loved last week's pep rally at George Mason University. He's not old enough to understand the tragic inevitability of the math that awaits him in his lifetime, and that of the children he hopes to raise. He can't, he's not old enough.
He can't connect the dots between this generation's expansions of spending and entitlements, and the moon shot to come.
Sadly, the dots will connect for him and his children.
