Center on Budget & Policy Priorities - Medicare Is Not Bankrupt

[CousinIT]

PLEASE SHARE FAR AND WIDE - WE MUST COUNTER THE LIES THE GOP IS TELLING AND WILL TELL AMERICANS AFTER TRUMP IS SWORN IN - ABOUT ACA AND MEDICARE.

Claims by some policymakers that the Medicare program is nearing “bankruptcy” are highly misleading. Although Medicare faces financing challenges, the program is not on the verge of bankruptcy or ceasing to operate. Such charges represent misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of Medicare’s finances.

Medicare’s financing challenges would be much greater without the health reform law (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA), which substantially improved the program’s financial outlook. Repealing the ACA, a course of action promoted by some who simultaneously claim that the program is approaching “bankruptcy,” would worsen Medicare’s financial situation.

The 2016 report of Medicare’s trustees finds that Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will remain solvent — that is, able to pay 100 percent of the costs of the hospital insurance coverage that Medicare provides — through 2028. Even in 2028, when the HI trust fund is projected for exhaustion, incoming payroll taxes and other revenue will still be sufficient to pay 87 percent of Medicare hospital insurance costs.[1] The share of costs covered by dedicated revenues will decline slowly to 79 percent in 2040 and then rise gradually to 86 percent in 2090. This shortfall will need to be closed through raising revenues, slowing the growth in costs, or most likely both. But the Medicare hospital insurance program will not run out of all financial resources and cease to operate after 2028, as the “bankruptcy” term may suggest.

The 2028 date does not apply to Medicare coverage for physician and outpatient costs or to the Medicare prescription drug benefit; these parts of Medicare do not face insolvency and cannot run short of funds. These parts of Medicare are financed through the program’s Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) trust fund, which consists of two separate accounts — one for Medicare Part B, which pays for physician and other outpatient health services, and one for Part D, which pays for outpatient prescription drugs. Premiums for Part B and Part D are set each year at levels that cover about 25 percent of costs; general revenues pay the remaining 75 percent of costs.[2] The trustees’ report does not project that these parts of Medicare will become insolvent at any point — because they can’t. The SMI trust fund always has sufficient financing to cover Part B and Part D costs, because the beneficiary premiums and general revenue contributions are specifically set at levels to assure this is the case. SMI cannot go “bankrupt.”

http://www.cbpp.org/research/health/medicare-is-not-bankrupt

[duffyduff]

1. They try anything with Medicare, Medicaid, or SS, they are DONE as a political party.

They have NO mandate to do such a thing, even from the idiots who voted them in.

We will never have to worry about gerrymandered congressional districts ever again. The party will be toast.

[Thinkingabout]

2. There is a lot of fraud occurring by some of the venders, I watch my bills all of

The time but claims could be paid before I see a statement.

[spanone]

3. K&R...