The argument seemed straightforward enough: Medicare is broke. That it is insufficiently funded to pay its current bills is the least of its problems. Medicare’s unfunded future liabilities defy the brain’s capacity to assimilate. But let’s try. Last year alone, the program added a staggering $1.8 trillion to its tab. Though this crater of new debt passed by nearly unnoticed, it actually outstripped, by some $300 billion, the latest annual deficit. That $1.5 trillion shortfall, the third in a row to top a trillion dollars, is best remembered for provoking a white-knuckle controversy this summer over the federal debt-ceiling. That debacle, in turn, convinced appraisers that American bonds—the gold standard ever since we deep-sixed the gold standard—had ceased to merit their Triple-A rating.

Medicare’s total future liabilities are pegged by government bean-counters at just under $25 trillion. That unfathomable sum is actually a gross understatement. When the bookkeeping legerdemain is pierced, the accrued deficit spikes by at least another $10 trillion. If you’re keeping score, this $35 trillion debt surpasses by a goodly sum the annual gross domestic product of the United States ($15 trillion) and the European Union ($16 trillion) combined. Medicare’s accumulated liabilities work out to approximately $300,000 owed by every household in the United States.

Mind you, that is just Medicare. We haven’t even thought about the $21 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities. The figure grows by over a trillion dollars every year, reflecting the demographics of an aging population that lives