Did Obama say that Medicare is the biggest contributor to the deficit?

[frazzled]

10. He did, because it's a fact

Health care costs in both the public and private sectors are growing faster than any other sector of the entire government. (See other threads, which have already been posted tonight.)

Everybody needs to get clear on this. Once you accept that medical costs are a problem, the question is how to contain them. The president's initial proposal in the grand bargain was to get the bargaining power to negotiate drug prices as one important and highly effective way to control these rising costs. It would help hugely. Of course, Republicans don't like that because they want big Pharma to makes lots of dough. So this will be the fight.

But the point to remember is: the fight is not about whether medicare costs are rising too much. That's a fact. The fight is about what to do about it. The president and Democrats want to do it in a way that does not cut benefits or otherwise cause seniors undue costs. The Republicans want to lay it all on the backs of the citizens.