MEGAN MCARDLE: Medicare is going to bankrupt us, which is why we need universal health care. “I hear this argument quite often, and it’s gibberish in a prom dress. Any cost savings you want to wring out of Medicare can be wrung out of Medicare right now: the program is large and powerful enough, and costly enough, that they are worth doing without adding a single new person to the mix. Conversely, if there is some political or institutional barrier which is preventing you from controlling Medicare cost inflation, then that barrier probably is not going away merely because the program covers more people.”