Think tank: Long-run deficit 'entirely due' to healthcare costs

The United States would be looking at long-term budget surpluses rather than deficits if only healthcare costs per person were on par with the rest of the world, the nonprofit Center for Economic and Policy Research demonstrates with a new online calculator.

The think tank's "Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator" allows users to change the course of the nation's fiscal outlook by swapping healthcare costs with those of other industrialized nations, all of which have longer life expectancies than the United States. Simply by adopting Australian healthcare prices, the calculator shows, the deficit would be eradicated by 2040.

"The country faces a healthcare cost crisis," the think tank said in announcing the calculator. "If it addresses this crisis, it does not have a deficit problem. If it doesn't address the healthcare cost crisis, there is no plausible way to address the problem of the deficit."

Free-market advocates, however, caution that price controls would devastate the nation's world-beating pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

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