Medicare, Social Security Eroded by Recession Losses

[steven johnson]

The Social Security and Medicare trustees will publish their annual report on the finances of both programs May 12. Many analysts said they expected both programs could run out of cash sooner than predicted a few years ago.

We're going to run out of money long before we run out of Baby Boomers.

By Amy Goldstein Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 12, 2009; 4:36 PM
The financial underpinnings of the Medicare and Social Security programs have eroded substantially as a result of the nation's recession, according to a government forecast issued today.

The report, by the trustees who monitor the fiscal health of the twin pillars of the government's assistance to older Americans, shows that Medicare remains the more urgent problem, with its trust fund that pays hospital bills predicted to run out of money in 2017, two years earlier than projected a year ago. The report also says that the Social Security system will become insolvent by 2037, four years sooner than the estimate given last year.

The trustees' report is the official, yearly appraisal of the fiscal health -- or fragility -- of the two massive entitlement programs. And over the years, the forecasts have been intertwined with political debates over how to try to ensure that the nation's retirement system can withstand the aging of the giant Baby Boom generation and -- more recently -- the country's economic downturn.

Today's news is more somber than that during the milder recession earlier this decade, when the economy made little dent in the trust funds that support monthly Social Security checks and the hospital part of Medicare health care benefits.
Today's report reflects the fact that fewer workers have been paying into both systems, as the country has lost 5.7 million jobs since recession began in December 2007.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051200252.html

[Hannah Bell]

1. the wp has been pushing ss's imminent bankruptcy since horace was a pup.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. How 'bout we invest it in the Stock Market?

:shrug:

[leftstreet]

3. It's strange how the Military Industrial Congressional Complex thrive$

yet everything else goes broke