McClaughry: Medicare four years until insolvency

By John McClaughry

Peter Suderman of Reason.com keeps a close watch on Federal fiscal issues. Here’s what he tells us from the recent annual report of the Medicare trustees.

“The Medicare Trustees Report estimated that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be insolvent in 2026. At that point, the fund will have to rely on incoming revenues, essentially operating on a cash-flow basis—and there won’t be enough cash.”

“In 2026, the hospital insurance fund will be able to cover only about 91 percent of its bills. In the years that follow, that gap will grow only larger. Without changes to the program’s financing, doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers will face rapidly reduced payments from the program. This will have ripple effects on the provision and availability of health care and on the wider American economy, roughly a sixth of which revolves around health care services.”

“The report also noted …that its fiscal forecast assumes that an array of cost-reduction measures, including a series of caps on Medicare physician payments and bonuses, will persist. But the trustees noted that Medicare’s “long-range costs could be substantially higher than shown throughout much of the report if the cost-reduction measures prove problematic and new legislation scales them back.”

Somehow the Democrats in Congress don’t grasp this. They are trying to enact lots of new Medicare benefits when Medicare won’t be able to pay its bills just four short years from now. This will compound the irresponsibility and bring Medicare’s day of insolvency even closer than 2026.

John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute. Reprinted with permission from the Ethan Allen Institute Blog.

Image courtesy of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

One thought on “McClaughry: Medicare four years until insolvency

  1. Uniparty games, OPM run amok.

    OPM = other people’s money.

    The uniparty excels at this game. Noe make no mistake, governments do topple on a most regular basis, so their is truth here. If you read history, you know this is true. If you read the bible, Kings one and two in particular, you’ll find historically speaking their is a long history of leaders behaving badly.

    At some point the people get fed up or God gets fed up and replaces them all, burns them to ashes, there are many ways a country falls. Taken over by another is also quite popular.

    What separates America from all other nations is our founding principles most closely aligned to Gods word in the Bible. Gods grace was our true success. A quick read of Deuteronomy and you’ll quickly see, hey this is us.

    We did leave out one thing, those whom testify falsely, or falsely accuse somebody get the punishment they were trying to afflict on others.

    Just think how this one small change would transform America. Lawfare would cease.

    It’s never to late to change our direction, this too is laid out in Kings. Gods,word is profitable for correction and study.

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