Category Archives: Debt and deficits

U.S. can’t afford not to invest in Alzheimer’s research

Debt and deficits, Health care

Advocates for the Alzheimer’s Association made a push in Congress this week for more funding for research. They based their argument on the costs of Alzheimer’s. This disease, which causes so much pain for patients and their families, also threatens the nation’s financial health.

According to the association, the total health care cost of caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s will be $214 billion this year, with Medicare and Medicaid paying $150 billion of that. Almost 20 percent of everything the federal government spends on Medicare is spent caring for patients with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

As the baby boomers age and as costs of care increase, the numbers become truly scary. By the middle of this century, overall annual medical costs for Alzheimer’s and other dementias are projected to rise to $1.2 trillion.

More than five million Americans now have Alzheimer’s – 200,000 of them under the age of 65. It is the country’s sixth leading cause of death. About 52,000 Arkansans have it – 8,000 of them between the ages of 65-74, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

Progress has been made in recent years with other diseases – most notably AIDS, which was a certain death sentence a couple of decades ago until it became a national priority. Between 2000 and 2010, deaths attributed to HIV fell 42 percent. They also fell for stroke, heart disease, prostate cancer and breast cancer.

But deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s increased 68 percent over that same time period. While five approved drugs will treat the symptoms for 6-12 months in half the patients, there’s no cure, no long-term effective treatment, and no means of prevention.

Congress did increase funding for research by $100 million this year, which was a good start. However, for every $1 that the National Institutes of Health now spends on Alzheimer’s research, Medicare and Medicaid spend $265 on patient care, and it’s often not the kind of care that prolongs productivity or enhances quality of life. We’re warehousing a lot of people.

The Alzheimer’s Association says that, if the onset of Alzheimer’s could be delayed five years, the national costs of care would be cut by half. It’s asking for another $200 million for research, which is a significant increase in this kind of budgetary environment. On the other hand, it’s less than the cost of two of the Pentagon’s proposed 2,400 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter planes – a weapons system that, as “60 Minutes” recently reported, is $163 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule.

Alzheimer’s is a clear and present danger. If we’re truly worried about America’s future, couldn’t we get by on 2,398 planes and use the savings from the other two to fund Alzheimer’s research? If not, I’m betting we can find $200 million somewhere in the federal budget.

None of this, of course, is taking into account the human toll Alzheimer’s takes on individuals and their families. Alzheimer’s is a particularly villainous disease. It robs individuals of their golden years, when they still have work to do and wisdom to offer. The mental decline can be rapid, but the physical death can stretch into decades. For loved ones, the long goodbye can be an almost unbearable mix of exhaustion, distraction, grief and guilt.

When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Americans mobilized for action. The same occurred when the Russians beat us into space.

Alzheimer’s is that kind of threat. Discovering a cure would be a gift to the world. Find the $200 million.

Back and forth with Boozman on Buffett

Debt and deficits, Politics

Warren Buffett has gotten himself involved in politics, and he’s probably going to be sorry about it.

Buffett, the billionaire investor, has made the point lately that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. He’s talking about the unfairness of the tax system and, indirectly, the budget deficit.

President Obama has proposed a “Buffett Rule” that would place a minimum tax on million-dollar salaries. Republican Sen. John Thune has proposed his own “Buffett Rule” that would allow people to pay extra money to reduce the federal debt. Arkansas Sen. John Boozman is one of the co-sponsors.

Thune’s bill is a waste of time and a personal attack. In effect, Republicans are saying, “If you want to pay more taxes, Mr. Buffett, go right ahead.” But that would not solve the problems Buffett was pointing out.

I asked Sen. Boozman for some time to talk about this and sent him my questions, which were not softballs. He called me that day ready to answer them, and to his credit, he didn’t back down from any of them. Even when my questions were a little more direct than they should have been, his tone never changed. Man, he’s a cool customer.

Boozman’s main policy point was that Obama’s Buffett bill won’t address the problem Buffett was discussing because Buffett will still take advantage of the loopholes and deductions he uses now to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. What’s needed are less spending and tax reform, he said.

Here’s more in my Wednesday column for the Arkansas News Bureau.

Griffin explains debt deal vote, tackles debt problem at Philander Smith

Debt and deficits, Politics, U.S. Congress

Rep. Tim Griffin is supposed to be embarking on a “Jumpstarting Jobs” tour, but at Philander Smith College Thursday evening, the talk was about the budget deficit.

Two days after President Obama signed the debt ceiling extension, Arkansas’ Republican Second District congressman defended his own vote for the deal. He said that while he wasn’t happy with it and wouldn’t have voted for it had Republicans controlled the White House and Senate, he “wasn’t willing to roll the dice” on the economy had it not passed.

Describing the deal, he said, “It’s like canceling your cable bill when you can’t afford the mortgage.”

Griffin broke with some in his party by saying that he believed the government should increase revenues by reducing the amount of tax deductions. Some Republican leaders have said that rates should be lowered in that case so that there is no net increase.

But he reiterated his opposition to increasing taxes. He said that tax revenues did not decrease as a percentage of the gross domestic product because of the Bush tax cuts. He repeated a favorite GOP line that Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem, punctuating it with a Powerpoint slide showing that while revenues have remained consistent since the 1940s, spending is rising dramatically as a percentage of GDP. Even if revenues were to increase somewhat, he said, there’s no way they can keep up with that rate of growth.

Ultimately, he said, the spending explosion will be addressed – if not by the government, then by its creditors.

Griffin said economic growth was the key to reducing the deficit. He called for a flatter tax, regulatory reform, patent reform, free trade, and pro-growth energy policy.

The debt ceiling deal includes automatic spending cuts if a committee of Republicans and Democrats – dubbed the “Super-Congress” by some – and the Congress as a whole cannot agree on reductions. Griffin said he expects Congress to make those cuts without the automatic trigger.

It was a lively discussion. Griffin opened the evening by asking who in the audience was the angriest and then handed the microphone to a man named Patrick, who read a lengthy statement in support of health care reform and against the Bush tax cuts. Despite it being his fifth event of the day, Griffin energetically engaged his audience. He didn’t shy away from any questions and even gave out his cell phone number.

He also didn’t sugarcoat the realities of the country’s budget deficit problem. Saying Medicare needs substantial reforms, for example, he said, “If you love Medicare, then you’d better reform it because it’s going away.”

The audience of about 60 was fully engaged and highly informed on the debt ceiling debate. And it seemed aware of the nation’s fiscal problems. “Everybody’s going to have to take a big bite of this doo-doo sandwich,” said a constituent named “Edmond” who described himself as an independent.

Don’t compromise on ending the debt; compromise on how to do it

Debt and deficits, Politics, U.S. Congress

What Congress should have done is agreed that ending the debt is nonnegotiable. The it should have compromised on the details.

What it did was decide that the details were nonnegotiable. But it compromised on the principle that we should stop passing on the debt to our children.

That’s a subject I tackle in this week’s column for the Arkansas News Bureau.