Well its been an interesting month, as I started to write this months blog entry I was recreating the theme every other day. First there was the latest CBO report on the revised numbers that are frightening and as usual here it is from the CBO Directors own words. http://cboblog.cbo.gov/ http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?m=201007 The Outlook for Major Health Care Programs and Social Security Growth in spending on health care programs remains the central fiscal challenge facing the nation. CBO projects that if current laws do not change, federal spending on major mandatory health care programs will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to about 10 percent in 2035 and will continue to increase thereafter. (Mandatory programs are those that do not require annual appropriations; the major mandatory health care programs include Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the subsidies that will be provided through the insurance exchanges that will be established as a result of the new health care legislation.) That estimate includes all of the effects of the recently enacted health care legislation. Although, CBO expects the legislation to reduce federal budget deficits over the first 10 years and in subsequent decades (through its effects on both revenues and spending), it is expected to increase federal spending in the next 10 years and for most of the following decade; by 2030, however, that legislation will slightly reduce federal spending for health care if all of its provisions are fully implemented, CBO projects. (The estimates for the health care legislation that are used in this report are unchanged from the ones that CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation published in March, when the legislation was being considered.) Under current law, spending on Social Security is also projected to rise over time as a share of GDP, albeit much less dramatically—from 5 percent to 6 percent of GDP.  read more »