Medicare Part D: "Financially Irresponsible"?

In a March 6 KaiserNetwork.org article, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, is reported to have said in a segment on CBS' "60 Minutes" this weekend that the drug benefit "probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s ... because we promise way more than we can afford to keep." Walker said that $8 trillion would need to be invested immediately to cover the difference between what Medicare will take in and what it will owe to beneficiaries over the next 75 years. He cited the long-term financing problems Medicare will face because of the impending retirement of the baby boomer generation. Walker said that "when those boomers start retiring en masse, then that will be a tsunami of spending that could swamp our ship of state if we don't get serious."

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