Beating the drum

From today's NY Times:

“When you actually look at that budget going out in time, the thing that is going to bankrupt us is government expenditures on health care.” -- Christina Romer, chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors:

The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that health spending will grow an average of 6.2 percent a year in the coming decade, to $4.4 trillion in 2018 from $2.4 trillion last year.

As [budget director Peter] Orszag has emphasized, rising health care costs are the main reason long-run budget projections look so grim. Slow the rate at which those costs rise, and the future will look far brighter. -- Paul Krugman, actually sounding upbeat for once. (Well, mostly upbeat: "I still won’t count my health care chickens until they’re hatched. But this is some of the best policy news I’ve heard in a long time.")

Get the picture? Health care: pretty key in terms of public finance (and private finance too).