Is Health Spending Growth A Sign Things Are Getting Better?

The massive growth in government debt stretching far into the future, Yglesias says,

is driven, everyone knows, primarily by Medicare. Edsall emphasizes the role of an aging population, but the more fundamental issue is that we’ve been fortunate to benefit from untold numbers of useful medical innovations that have changed what it means to be committed to providing health care to the elderly. That is to say, it’s more a crisis of abundance than of scarcity. If we stop inventing new treatments, then costs will tumble as patents (and patients) expire. Indeed, the 2003 bill adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare has turned out to be cheaper than expected, largely because the pace at which new medicines are invented has slowed. Common sense says that was a bad thing, and that a zero-innovation future would be bleak