Reply #1: Saving is probably being forced out due to his quote in this SF Chronicle [View All]

[EVDebs]

article

Medicare faces cost crisis
Multitrillion-dollar deficits loom over federal programs

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/07/BUG0V9N54U1.DTL

"""Medicare's financial difficulties come sooner -- and are much more severe -- than those confronting Social Security,'' the report said. So why does Social Security rather than Medicare top the president's agenda? "Because Social Security is the easier of the two problems to solve,'' said Texas A&M economist Thomas Saving, who signed the report as a public member of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund, the board that oversees the financial health of the two programs.

Saving said elected officials of both major parties have been unwilling to face the future costs of federal health care programs.
"I don't have to be as careful,'' said Saving, who outlined the Medicare problem in an analysis issued after the official report.

In his analysis, he writes, "Although policy-makers have focused on the long-run sustainability of Social Security, the financial problem in Medicare is five times as great.'' Looking more than 75 years into the future, Saving estimates that the nation faces a $62 trillion unfunded liability for Medicare -- versus a $12 trillion gap for Social Security. Yet, he said, lawmakers created a prescription drug benefit that added nearly $17 trillion in future IOUs to that $62 trillion shortfall.

As a frame of reference, the entire U.S. economy is worth about $11 trillion this year. And Saving projected only future Medicare costs. The separate Medicaid program -- whose combined state and federal costs of $270 billion in 2003 nearly equaled Medicare's $278 billion price tag -- is also on an upward trajectory.""