Medicare is lurching toward disaster and it is too late for the Bush Administration and Congress to do anything about it, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Tuesday.

He said the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people.

"Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes," Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute think-tanks.

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Leavitt's speech echoes repeated warnings from other federal government officials who have noted that Medicare spending is projected to be 3.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2009

4. The solution to the problem is contained in his comments -- "by less and less people". We need to consider countering the right-wing noise on Medicare with a coordinated message: "Expand Medicare to save Medicare" by explaining the benefits of a universal risk pool versus what we do with Medicare right now -- redline out the most expensive patients to insure and make them the governments problem.