Dr. Leavitt's Scary Diagnosis

Kudos, fatsos.

"Health care, says the man most concerned with that 17 percent of America's economy, can be 'a nation-ruining issue.' As Michael Leavitt ends four years as secretary of health and human services, he offers this attention-arresting arithmetic: Absent fundamental reforms, over the next two decades, the average American household's health-care spending, including the portion of its taxes that pays for Medicare and Medicaid, will go from 23 percent to 41 percent of average household income.

It is, Leavitt says, 'predictable' that today's traumatizing economic turbulence, by heightening Americans' insecurity, will complicate reforming entitlements. This, too, is predictable: By curtailing revenue, today's recession will bring closer the projected exhaustion of the Medicare Part A trust fund, from early 2019 to perhaps 2016. That should get the president-elect's attention."

"Should." But won't, I'll wager.

And even if it did, doing the right thing re: sick care "entitlements" is simply not politically correct.

And who has gotten us into another fine mess, Ollie?

"In the 43 years since America decided that health care for the elderly would be paid for by people still working, the ratio of workers to seniors has steadily declined. And the number of seniors living long enough to have five or more chronic conditions -- 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries -- has increased. Many of those conditions could be prevented or managed by better decisions about eating, exercising and smoking."

Fatsos.

(Though, in all fairness, Big Sick Care and its co-conspirators, including Big Government, are complicit in keeping people fat.)

If you are fit, better protect yourself and oppose efforts to make sick care more available to the calorically irresponsible.

This is an existential war.

And unless you act, you and your children will lose.