Vertical axis is percent of GDP

From the Trustees Report:

The financial outlook for the Medicare program continues to raise serious concerns. Total Medicare expenditures were $468 billion in 2008 and are expected to increase in future years at a faster pace than either workers’ earnings or the economy overall. As a percentage of GDP, expenditures are projected to increase from 3.2 percent in 2008 to 11.4 percent by 2083 (based on our intermediate set of assumptions). Growth of this magnitude, if realized, would substantially increase the strain on the nation’s workers, Medicare beneficiaries, and the Federal Budget.

HI tax income and other dedicated revenues are expected to fall short of HI expenditures in all future years. The HI trust fund does not meet our short-range test of financial adequacy, and fund assets are projected to be exhausted in 2017. In the long range, projected expenditures and scheduled tax income are substantially out of balance, and the trust fund does not meet our test of long-range close actuarial balance. Currently, this imbalance is relatively small, with dedicated revenues estimated to cover 88 percent of costs in 2009, but it will grow rapidly in the absence of changes to current law: taxes would cover 81 percent of estimated costs in 2017, and only 29 percent at the end of the long-range period. Closing deficits of this magnitude will require very substantial increases in tax revenues and/or reductions in expenditures.

The core premise of Democratic economic theory is that there is no upper limit to the size and power of government, and no upper limit to the amount of money it can spend.

Somehow, five percent of the American population (from Obama's "95 percent" number) will pay for all of this.