Meeting the Long-term Challenge of Old Age Entitlement Spending

Is the United States going bankrupt? This question is asked with increasing frequency for two main reasons. First, deficits have soared in response to the financial crisis and the recession. Second, spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and, to a lesser extent, social security is projected to increase drastically over the next 60 years, engendering extraordinary fiscal pressure. Some action will have to be taken. The challenge is to take that action as quickly as possible, so that the fiscal future that we now face can be changed before it does significant and possibly irreparable harm.