Dave Schuler provides a generous excerpt of a paywalled WSJ op-ed lamenting runaway deficits and observes,[/caption]

“Nearly all of the increase is a result of uncontrolled health care spending. Ironically, that’s a consequence of attempting to keep health care within the private sector. If, instead of creating Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, the VA had been used as a model and the federal government had opened a series of clinics offering a limited array of services for the poor, the elderly, and, particularly, the elderly poor—the stated intent of the programs—costs might not have risen as they did. That would have needed to have been coupled with a commitment to cost control, the lack of which is the fundamental source of our present problem.

[…]

“Right now most federal government spending is on health care or old age pensions and state and local spending is on health care and public employee pensions and both are increasing in cost faster than economic growth or incomes. Increasing taxation, borrowing more, or simply issuing credit are all likely to create additional problems without addressing the underlying causes of the problems.