U.S. government spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs will double over the next ten years to $1.8 trillion, or 7.3 percent of the country's economic output, congressional researchers said Tuesday. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in its annual budget and economic outlook that healthcare spending would rise by 8 percent a year from this year to 2022 because of the aging population and rising treatment costs, and it will continue to adversely affect the U.S. budget deficit. Medicare, the healthcare program for the elderly, is responsible for roughly half the projected growth, and Medicaid, which helps provide healthcare for the poor, accounts for about one-third. The remainder is attributed to new federal subsidies to help lower income Americans purchase insurance under the 2010 healthcare overhaul. Researchers warned that if current revenue remains unchanged, rising healthcare spending could have dire consequences for the U.S. deficit when combined with the cost of Social Security. “The resulting deficits will increase federal debt to unsupportable levels,” the CBO report said. “To prevent that outcome, policymakers will have to substantially restrain the growth of spending for those programs, raise revenues above their historical share of GDP (Growth Domestic Product), or pursue some combination of those two approaches.” The federal deficit is expected to rise above $1 trillion in 2012 for the fourth year in a row. President Barack Obama and lawmakers in Congress have spent months debating how best to reduce the federal deficit, and the CBO's data will likely add to the challenge for compromise.
