“In the long run, betting against the US economy, like betting against the US military, is for losers.”
Growth in real health spending per capita has outpaced growth in real GDP per capita by more than 2 percentage points during the past 50 years. Should this trend continue for just 35 more years, our real standard of living—i.e., what we have to spend on everything besides health care—will begin to decline. That is, even though our aggregate standard of living (measured in GDP/capita terms) will continue to grow, our NET standard of living will decline because health care will have crowded out so much of what we can spend all the other things in life that make it worthwhile.
This is not betting against the U.S. economy: it is simply recognizing that a tumor largely of the government’s making needs to be addressed before it kills the otherwise healthy patient in which it is growing.
All one entry accounting games that pretend that this or that piece of income or wealth that you don't care for, isn't income or wealth to those to benefit from it (and provide it, for that matter), are economic nonsense.