Today we have unfortunately crossed a line in such fantasies that I predicted would occur in the 1990s while running MCSNet if we did not back away from our foolishness. With a nearly 18% increase in federal spending over last year in the current month's MTS (October) and a $284 billion deficit for that single month we are now seeing said spending go vertical driven by the areas I talk about all the time and yet the hollering from all sides is to do more of it rather than address cost which in fact can and must be slashed dramatically -- by 80% relative to GDP -- and it must happen now as our continued refusal to address the issue had allowed the exponential curve, on the evidence, to go nearly vertical. CMS, which is Medicare and Medicaid, had spending expand at a stunning 34.6% from last year in this month with Supplementary Trust Fund expenditures (physicians) skyrocketing up +59%, hospital spending similarly exploding higher by 53%, and Part D drug spending going prompt critical at an astounding rate of 402% (more than three times higher) compared with the same month last year, totaling nearly $38 billion in the month of October alone which annualized is nearly half a trillion dollars. The only "restraint" was found in Medicaid block grants which advanced 4.97% (and that, I remind you, is wildly higher than the claimed rate of inflation.)
I would dismiss these figures to some degree being October (that is, the Administration simply deferred paying people in the last days of September to make the deficit look smaller, a common tactic by the way) except that the Medicaid spend did not equally skyrocket.
In the late 1990s, while running MCSNet and being extraordinarily alarmed at the trend that was evident even then, as I've repeated on an unbroken basis since, I pegged when the detonation would become evident, given the trend and simple mathematical extrapolation: 2025.
Well, here we are and here it is.
