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

[mucifer]

17. End of life care is crazy expensive for a lot of people. Lots of elderly die in ICUs

on lots of machines when there is no cure for the disease. Other countries with single payer systems don't allow that. But, I don't think any politician will tackle this successfully in our culture.

60 Minutes did an episode on it:
Every medical study ever conducted has concluded that 100 percent of all Americans will eventually die. This comes as no great surprise, but the amount of money being spent at the very end of people's lives probably will.

Last year, Medicare paid $55 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients' lives. That's more than the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of Education. And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenses may have had no meaningful impact. Most of the bills are paid for by the federal government with few or no questions asked.

Now you might think this would have been an obvious thing for Congress to address when it passed health care reform, but as we reported last November in the midst of the debate, what use to be a bipartisan issue has become a politically explosive one - a perfect example of the rising costs that threaten to bankrupt the country and how hard it is to rein them in.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-6747002.html