But the conventional wisdom is wrong — or at least misleading. Although the squeeze is not a myth, it’s highly localized: uncontrolled medical spending. This is crowding out other spending, from wages to defense budgets. If we don’t stabilize health costs (and there is little sign that we will), we should expect the squeeze to continue indefinitely. Income inequality would also probably worsen.
We now have a new study from economist Richard Burkhauser of Cornell University that illuminates health care’s peculiar role. A standard benchmark of economic well-being is median income: It is the earnings in the middle of any distribution of income figures. The higher the median, the better off people are assumed to be. In recent decades, the median income of U.S. households has grown slowly, stagnated or declined. In 2018, according to the Census Bureau, the median household income was $63,179; in 1999, it was $61,526.
