CBO: By 2021, Entitlement Spending Will Grow from 9.9 to 12.0 Percent of GDP
Mainly because of health care related costs.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs...ding-will-grow-99-120-percent-gdp_554009.html
President Obamaâs average annual deficit spending (including his proposed deficit spending for 2012) has been 9.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) â more than double the tally of any other president since World War II. In the wake of Obamaâs spending spree, itâs therefore a bit disconcerting that the CBO writes in a newly issued report that âthe continued aging of the population and growth in health care costs will almost certainly push up federal spending significantly relative to GDP.â
The CBO projects that âspending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care programsâ â chiefly Obamacare â âwill grow from 9.9 percent of GDP in 2010 to 12.0 percent by 2021, driven largely by rapid growth in health care costs.â Remember all of those claims that Obamacare would bend the cost-curve down (claims that President Obama is still making)?
None of this should be surprising. Often forgotten amid President Obamaâs disingenuous attempts to make Obamacare sound like itâs merely âhealth insurance reformâ is that Obamacare would spawn a massive expansion of Medicaid at a time when the CBO says entitlements are already driving deficit spending and eating up 55 percent of the federal budget. In fact, the CBO projects that more than half of the newly insured under Obamacare would be people simply added to the Medicaid rolls: 18 million people by 2016.
There are far more effective ways to reduce the number of uninsured than to dump them into Medicaid: by lowering health costs (like the CBO says the 2009 House Republican health bill would do), ending the tax codeâs discrimination against the uninsured, and funding state-run community pools. That 3-step approach would provide a compelling replacement for Obamacare.
In that vein, there is some good news from the CBO. It projects that enacting H.R. 2, the repeal of Obamacare, âwould reduce the âfederal budgetary commitment to health careâ by $464 billion over the 2012â2021 period.â No wonder Americans want repeal
