Mandatory Spending

Great infographic from the CBO on mandatory federal spending AKA entitlements. You can get a larger version of the entire graphic by clicking on it but that comes with some warnings: 1) it’s a PDF; 2) it’s big.

The graphic gives me a handy way of explaining something I mention from time to time around here, that government healthcare spending amounts to something like 70% of all healthcare spending. Total healthcare spending from all sources in the U. S. amounts to about $2.3 trillion. As may occur to you that alone is larger than the economies of many good-sized countries.

Federal healthcare spending: $856 billion
State Medicaid spending: $400 billion
FEHB: $40 billion

Add to that healthcare spending on current and retired state employees and active duty military healthcare spending and I figure that you get to 70% without a great deal of difficulty. Might be a bit higher or a bit lower.

1 comment… add one
  • Jimbino Link

    Spending by the Feds comes to just under $3000 per USSA resident per annum. This puts the lie to the canard that the poor and uninsured get free health care in emergency rooms at the expense of the insured, since their fair share of the healthcare pie is $3000 per year.

    I venture to guess that it is the insured who enjoy health care expenditures in their favor at the expense of the poor and uninsured, who no doubt do not use as much federally subsidized health care.

    Health care is much like our national parks and forests and our public universities: everybody pays for them, but they are mostly run as White Country Clubs.

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