Post by RS Davis on Apr 7, 2004 20:35:25 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Sue Blevins Wrote:[/glow] The warning signs are clear. It's time to allow seniors to get off the sinking Medicare ship and seek private sector alternatives for health insurance.
Overseers of the Medicare trust funds recently warned that the hospital fund (Medicare Part A) is scheduled for bankruptcy much sooner than previously estimated. Last year, trustees estimated that under "intermediate assumptions" the program would run out of money in 2026. This year, they say it will go broke in 2019 under those same assumptions. However, if there is higher-than-anticipated demand for services or less favorable economic conditions, the hospital fund could become exhausted as early as 2012, in just eight years.
Opponents of the new prescription drug benefit will try to blame Republicans for the financial peril of the Medicare hospital trust fund. But what many people may not realize is that the new drug benefit (Medicare Part D) will be financed through an entirely different trust fund. Like the outpatient doctor program (Medicare Part B), the drug benefit will be supported primarily through general tax revenues and premiums paid by beneficiaries. All told, the new drug benefit is projected to cost $916 billion between 2004 and 2013, with general tax revenues supporting $689.5 billion of that benefit.
Annual spending for all Medicare programs combined is expected to grow from $304.5 billion in 2004 to $690.6 billion in 2013. Total program costs are anticipated to be more than $5 trillion between 2004 and 2013.
- Rick
Sue A. Blevins, president of the Institute for Health Freedom, is the author of Medicare's Midlife Crisis (Cato Institute, 2001).
