Medicare Not Going Broke

Sarah Kliff at The Washington Post writes today about the "greatly exaggerated" reports of Medicare's insolvency before the new Medicare Trustees Report is released for 2012. As it turns out, the Trustees Report has been performing this analysis since 1970 and in every year has predicted the programs inevitable demise. Of course, it's now been 42 years since the Project first released their analysis and the program has yet to go under. With the political popularity of the program and the myriad of avenues Congress can pursue to refrain the program from going broke, it seems unlikely the program will ever actually go broke. But rest assured, I'm sure we'll see much about Medicare's impending doom over the next couple of days, especially from those fervently opposed to the program.

"In 1970, the Medicare Trustees began issuing annual reports on the financial state of the Medicare Trust Fund. It has faced a projected shortfall “almost from its inception,” a 2009 Congressional Research Service report found. In 1970, the Medicare Trustees Report predicted that the fund would be insolvent just two years later, in 1972. Pretty much every year after that, the Trust Funds’ insolvency has never seemed that far off:"

 Continue to the article here.