Health care is the budget-buster—not education

From 1992 to 2009, the amount Vermonters spent on health care shot up. In the early 1990s, health care spending was roughly 10 percent of the state’s economy. Last year it was over 17 percent.

When you plot those figures on a chart, you see a steeply rising line. Economically, this growth in the cost of health care is unsustainable.

Now contrast health care with education. Between 1992 and 2009, Vermont’s total expenditures for K-12 public education fluctuated between 5.5 percent and 6 percent. On a line graph, education expenditures are flat. Unlike health care, education costs are not becoming an ever-larger portion of the economy. In other words, they are sustainable.

In his final State of the State Address earlier this month, Gov. Jim Douglas touched on both health care and education. Care to guess which he called the bigger problem?

He uttered the words “health care” just three times, and the context was either congratulatory or neutral. Nowhere did he mention that one of the main reasons Vermont is having trouble balancing its budget—and has had for several years—is the unsustainable growth of health care.

“Education,” on the other hand, appeared 36 times in the governor’s speech, and the references were mostly negative. Only one other noun—the word “state”—crossed the governor’s lips more frequently.

The first step to solving Vermont’s budget problems is to understand what’s causing them. Controlling health care costs is a big task, and one Vermont probably cannot solve by itself. But making education a scapegoat diverts Vermonters’ attention from the real issue we need to address: galloping health care costs.