The Change Mariner

Medicare Overseers Expect Soaring Costs

New York Times:

Medicare's financial condition has significantly deteriorated, partly because of exploding health costs and partly because of the new Medicare law, the government reported on Tuesday. In its annual report to Congress, the Medicare board of trustees said the program's hospital insurance trust fund could run out of money before the end of the next decade.

The trustees have made such projections in the past, but this one was much bleaker than the outlook reported just last year.
By contrast, the financial outlook for Social Security, though shaky in the long run, changed little from last year.

John L. Palmer, a public representative on the six-member board, who is also a former dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, said: "The magnitude of the problems is much greater in Medicare. They start sooner, get bigger and will be much more difficult to deal with. The problems of Social Security are manageable, compared with those of Medicare."

Medicare was already an issue in this year's elections, but in their report, the trustees stepped up the pressure on politicians by saying that Medicare appeared unsustainable in its current form. Democrats, while asserting that the Medicare program was not in crisis, nevertheless said President Bush had aggravated its problems.