The deficits in looking at health care costs

I have never, and may never again, highlight a piece by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. Even though he is thought provoking, his writing is almost always hyper-partisan from a liberal perspective and hyper-partisanship will not lead to the solutions we need now.

Republicans are not always wrong and Democrats are not always wrong. At the very least, the law of averages means they have to be right some of the time. And, those who propose otherwise in our media-political establishment aren’t people we can usually trust for reliable information.

So today though Mr. Krugman continued his rant against the Republican way – and he made the continuing false argument that deficits do not matter much – he also made some interesting points about how we should be directing our health care spending as we dig our way out of this mess (read it here).

Skyrocketing health care costs are the most dangerous spending dilemma facing budget writers at the state and federal level. And, just cutting payments to providers or cutting people off from health programs isn’t a long-term fix, but only a band-aid to get us out of one more budget year. We need leaders who will construct a new, more efficient set of priorities for these programs, so that when government revenues do rise again we don’t fall back into these same old tried-and-failed bottomless and costly policy pits.