(E)ven if Obama gets all this through, it will not address the fundamental problem. Which is that the cost of healthcare keeps going up — because of an ageing population, a revolution in medical and pharmaceutical technology and a structure that rewards doctors for prescribing an unlimited amount of medication and surgery. If you look at the current house bill with the most steam behind it, this is what the Congressional Budget Office says it will do to costs: “The net cost of the coverage provisions would be growing at a rate of more than 8% per year in nominal terms between 2017 and 2019; we would anticipate a similar trend in the subsequent decade.”

That means almost no industry will exist in the US in the next decade except healthcare. And that’s because every other industry will go bankrupt trying to pay for it. How does GM compete when it has to pay a medical bill that German car companies largely leave to the government? (Emphasis mine)