Lots of predictions have been made about 2012. If things go according to form, many of those predictions will prove erroneous.
But here are two predictions that certainly will be fulfilled: The American people will continue to need a lot of medical care, and that care will get even more expensive than it already is.
And here is another prediction -- one that may not come true in 2012 but is likely to pan out within a few years: Government-funded Medicare is going to go broke.
Medicare's costs -- including its prescription drug benefit, whose price skyrocketed after much too low cost estimates were used to get it passed by Congress -- are breaking the bank. Estimates of just when, not if, Medicare will go broke range from later this decade to early next decade.
Helping drive the bankrupting cost of Medicare is the enrollment in the federal program of more than 1.5 million baby boomers every year. There is going to be an unsustainably high number of people receiving Medicare benefits compared with the number who will be paying into the system.
What's more, the amount of money that retirees pay into Medicare during their working years can be dwarfed by the benefits they get from it. As an Associated Press article noted recently, "Health care costs are the most unpredictable part of retirement, and Medicare remains an exceptional deal for retirees, who can reap benefits worth far more than the payroll taxes they paid in during their careers."
It's hard to see, though, how Medicare is an "exceptional deal" for the nation as a whole if the way it is set up is eventually going to force either massive, painful cuts in benefits or economy-crippling tax increases -- or both.
Yet despite the clear evidence that a Medicare cost calamity is on the way, virtually any serious attempt by Congress to reform the program is quickly shot down and criticized as a threat to senior citizens. And so, we remain on a path to Medicare insolvency.
If we'd like to take a detour off that path, we might want to do so soon. The Medicare time bomb is ticking.