Do the people who write about the need to cut "entitlements" really not know that the problem is the unique inefficiency of the U.S. health care system (per capita health care costs in other wealthy countries average half as much) or are they lying? Of course this diatribe about the candidates' neglect of longterm budget problems ignores the fact that one of the candidates (Obama) has a health care proposal that could contain health care costs and thereby make the "entitlement' problem manageable. Of course, authors who write things like this probably can't get their pieces in Slate, so it's much easier to repeat nonsense about the entitlement crisis.
--Dean Baker