Another example of liberal logic

My nemesis Tom wrote a response to my recent editorial about the huge unfunded liability of Goverment, which I will respond to in my next post:

In his Nov. 18 column, "Stop the Spending” Rich cited a figure called the "government unfunded liabilities" and stated that its about $106 trillion. Other sources report this figure at less than half that amount but its still a big, scary number. Where does it come?

As I understand it, the unfunded liability is money that’s been promised which we have not yet set aside. Its entitlement money (mostly Medicare) that could potentially be paid out to all eligible Americans for the rest of their lives. That’s a lot of people over a long period of time. Of course the amount is huge and of course we don't have that kind of money on hand, but how useful is a statistic like this?

Here's an analogy. When we had our two children we incurred a liability of about $450,000. That's the money that we will spend for the first 18 years of their lives. Add in our mortgage over that period of time and our "liability" is more like $750,000. We don't have that kind of money. Should we sell the house and put the kids up for adoption? No. This imposing figure will be paid out over a long period of time with money that we haven t made yet. We’ll be OK.

So am I saying that should we ignore ie government's unfunded liability? Absolutely not. I think we can best address “future liabilities” by reducing health care costs. Currently a single night in the hospital costs thousands of dollars. The intensive care units charge more than $25,000 per night. Nursing homes average $200 per day. Reducing these extortionate prices would really help bring government spending into line. It's a great reason to work for meaningful health care reform.