Timothy Noah Quotes

If there are healthy - and growing - numbers of people working and paying taxes, we are better able to pay the costs of people living longer.

The baby boom is about to become a patient boom.

I think that retiring the baby boomers is going to be one of the great challenges in America, that you cannot make fiscal sense out of the future of our children without taking on entitlements.

The aging and declining population will have far-reaching impacts. Declining fertility rates will possibly increase immigration. The structure of family and society will inevitably change.

Demography is changing us as we are older societies, we're living longer. How the generations balance each other out, how that affects education and health care.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

Who are benefits promised to, overwhelmingly? Well, they're promised to older people. And if you have a society like Europe that is upside down where there are a lot more older people than younger people, you have economic calamity.

America as we know it will end unless we end Medicare as we know it.

Social Security's not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you've got to put all of it on the table.

While the Left seems obsessed with increasing taxes and spending even more money, conservatives have focused more heavily on the need for spending restraint and entitlement reform - primarily to preserve and protect the future of the Medicare program. Overlooked in all of this is the future of Medicaid.

Well, the big elephant in the whole system is the baby boomer generation that marches through like a herd of elephants. And we begin to retire in 2008.

If you look at the studies coming out of the Congressional Budget Office, the number one thing that's going to blow a hole in the deficit as we go forward 20, 30 years is government spending on healthcare.

By the year 2020, the year of perfect vision, the old will outnumber the young.

I have young kids. The fiscal burden that will be imposed on them is going to depend primarily on whether we tackle this looming problem in our health care system - with rising costs that don't seem, by the way, to be necessarily associated with higher quality. That is the key burden that they will face.

I think America may be growing up and accepting the fact that the bulk of life exists beyond 50. Because demographically... the vast population is over 50.

I've made a commitment that state spending in Vermont won't grow any more than the rate of inflation plus population growth.

I think it's very important not to confuse the importance of dealing with Social Security in the long term with these short-term deficit reduction challenges. They're different issues.

I think we have to be very careful when we toss around terms like 'cut health care costs.' We would do very well to expect a cut in the rate of increase.

I opposed Clinton's budget deal in 1997 because he brought in $115 billion cut in Medicare that created greater pressure for providers not to participate.

On the Medicare/paygo spending cuts, I strongly oppose that and have asked what is the plan to avert that. Senator McConnell assured me that will not be allowed to happen.

In Florida, Medicaid is the fastest-growing part of our state budget - hands down. It is increasing at more than 3.5 times the rate of our general revenue.

We ought to have a platform to plan to save Medicare from bankruptcy.

As more people live longer, we can expect there to be additional costs for society.

I'd also remind people, if I were running for Presidency, that a long-term problem facing the budget is Social Security and Medicare.

[Several candidates talked of problems with the federal Medicare system, particularly concerns about whether it would cover prescription drug costs in the future.] We're asking senior citizens to make a choice between their health and their income, ... Medicare is probably the most difficult challenge we face in the next century, because it has a lot to do with other things besides money.