I thought i would offer one-way to look at balancing the budget differently than the way it is thought of today.

Instead of accepting new medical rates at last year's price plus inflation, you say, No!   We are not going to do it that way now.  Instead, i, the government, is telling you that the rate we will pay you three years from today, is going to be a rate ten percent less than the current rate without counting inflationary years.  

Essentially you are telling the medical community that you think there is 10% waste in the current system and you expect them to find it and fix it.  After that we will revisit the next rate adjustment once we're done with this one.

Other places are ripe for savings (at least to the 5-10% level), so expenditures can be brought down.

Maybe not enough to drop below receipts, but at least closer.  That's when you go get your money from some form of taxes (e.g., business, wealthy, etc.) enough to balance the budget.

The Government have as good of accountants as i am.  Surely, one of those guys could come up with a quite realistic doable "balanced budget" scenario under good employment conditions.