Ticker 's been foaming at the mouth about this forever. But he's been right about it forever, too.
.... Last fiscal year (ending September 30th) CMS spent $2.733 trillion, up 9.98% (there's that 10% number!) from last year. Prescription drug spending was up an astounding 22%. Physicians are whining that their payments are actually down in inflation-adjusted funds which may be true but physician spending in Medicare was up 6.99% last fiscal year which is wildly higher than published inflation. So who's stealing the money? The government is spending it and the doctors are not getting it -- someone is stealing it.
Medicaid spend was up 8.2% -- again, wildly above inflation. That's only part of it since Medicaid pays roughly half at the federal level with the states having to post up the rest. Who is stealing the money?
This is the very same "Medicare for all" provider set and government funding set that the Democrats will now put forward as "the answer" and try to find a way to force into law. But doing so will take the balance of the roughly $5.5 trillion in medical spend last fiscal year, the $3 trillion of it that is not currently federal, and force it onto the federal balance sheet.
May I remind you that the additional $3 trillion will all be deficit spending because that is more than all personal income taxes and eight times the total of corporate income tax. In other words no, "tax the rich" is a lie unless you intend to more than double the current tax rates.
Now perhaps you can try that, but if you don't manage to pull that off then you have an immediate 13% inflation rate....
Watch this play out. Democrats will enact "Medicare for All" and are likely to corral the votes necessary to override Trump's veto. BUT....they will not enact it until very late in Trump's term, meaning that they get to brag right through the '28 Presidential election (assuring a (D) President's election" before the roof collapses and the whole cabin goes down the river in the flood.
It's gonna be very ugly.
