If We Want to Fix Health Care, It’s Now or Never

Baby Boomers Haven’t Busted America’s System yet—but We Need to Figure out How to Pay Less for Better Patient Outcomes

Are the baby boomers going to bust the health care system?

That’s the big question Wall Street Journal reporter Anna Wilde Mathews posed in her opening remarks to a Zócalo/Health Futures Council at Arizona State University event last night, held at the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix. With America’s elderly population on a path to nearly double by 2050—up to 83.7 million—and health costs only rising, the country is charging headfirst toward the biggest strain its health care system has ever seen.

“Will we be able to get the care when we …