“European critics of the U.S. health care system often focus on the private provision of health care and health insurance. Yet the more important difference between the United States and other developed countries is the failure to control government spending. Other countries employ global budgets and control access to expensive drugs and new technology. The United States, compared to other developed countries, has very meager spending controls. If current trends continue, U.S. government health care spending will consume an ever-growing portion of national income — far more so than any other developed country. … No country can spend an ever-rising share of its output on health care, indefinitely. There is a limit to how much a government can extract from the young to accommodate the old. When that limit is reached, governments go broke, and the United States appears most likely to hit this limit.” (06/28/06)