I recently got into a heated debate about the necessity of health care reform with an old high school friend of mine. Like many Americans right now, my friend is weary from months and months of tireless partisan positioning and misinformation. To him and many others I know, the notion of investing trillions of dollars over the next decade to reforming health care does not appear on the surface as an economic necessity, but thats because they do not fully understand the choke hold health care spending has on our economy. To give him a better understanding, I recommended he watch I.O.U.S.A, a 2008 documentary that examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States. Particularly, the demonstration of how rising entitlements (such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security spending) by Alice Rivilin is quite compelling.

Check out the 30 minute byte-sized version of the movie here.