When you look beyond the current “fiscal cliff” brinksmanship, the long-term budget deficit will depend in large part on two key trendlines: health care costs and economic growth. I’d like to explain how pharmaceutical innovation can be a key positive factor in both areas – if it isn’t choked off by short-sighted efforts to close the budget gap.
The first trendline: health care costs.
Back in 2009, then-budget director Peter Orszag wrote, “Over the long run, the deficit impact of every other fiscal policy variable is swamped by the impact of health-care costs.” That hasn’t changed. One big reason: 10,000 Americans will reach retirement age every day for the next 19 years. Medicare is the fastest-growing major entitlement, growing 68 percent since 2002, according to the Heritage Foundation. And these folks, as a whole, can be expected to live longer than those who started receiving benefits when Medicare was enacted in the 1960s.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Beyond The Fiscal Cliff, Pharmaceutical Innovation Is The Key To Long-Term Fiscal Health - Forbes
