TightyRighty.net

Medicare is in big trouble. No news here. However, the Medicare Trustees (including Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, Hilda L. Solis, Secretary of Labor, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Donald M. Berwick, M.D., Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) issued their annual report last week, and here are a couple of interesting points:

… the HI trust fund is now estimated to be exhausted in 2024, 5 years earlier than was shown in last year’s report, and the fund is not adequately financed over the next 10 years. HI taxable earnings in 2010 were lower than previously estimated, and the rate of growth in these earnings is projected to accelerate and to exceed last year’s growth assumptions in 2011-2019. HI expenditures in 2010 were close to the previous estimate, but the projected level grows more rapidly than shown in last year’s report because of the projected faster growth in earnings. HI expenditures have exceeded income annually since 2008 and are projected to continue doing so through the short-range period until the fund becomes exhausted in 2024. In 2010, $32.3 billion in trust fund assets were redeemed to cover the shortfall of income relative to expenditures. The assets were $272 billion at the beginning of 2011, and the asset balance will fall below the Trustees’ recommended minimum level early in 2011 under the intermediate assumptions, 1 year earlier than estimated in last year’s report. The HI trust fund has not met the Trustees’ formal test of short-range financial adequacy since 2003.

and

In this report, the various cost-reduction measures—most importantly the reductions in the payment rate updates for most categories of Medicare providers by the growth in economy-wide multifactor productivity—are assumed to occur in all future years, as required by the Affordable Care Act. In addition, an almost 30 percent reduction in Medicare payment rates for physician services is assumed to be implemented in 2012 as required under current law, despite the virtual certainty that Congress will override this reduction.

In view of the factors described above, it is important to note that the actual future costs for Medicare are likely to exceed those shown by the current-law projections in this report.

So Medicare will be broke by 2024 under rosy projections.

Paul Ryan has proposed a plan which would not impact Americans 55 years old and older.  Folks under 55 (myself included) would be transitioned to a plan which provides premium support to Medicare enrollees, assisting them to purchase a health care plan of their choice. As Heritage’s Robert Moffit and Kathryn Nix write, it’s modeled after the plan that federal workers and employees enjoy, and it would introduce intense competition in a consumer-driven market, which has historically slowed the growth of health care costs and increased patient satisfaction.

It may not be perfect, but it is a starting point for the discussion necessary to save Medicare.

What has President Obama proposed?  Nada, nothing, zip, zero, other than to demagogue Congressman Ryan’s proposal.

When this country desperately needs leadership, what is our President doing?  Campaigning to keep the job! Quit campaigning and do your job Mr. President!!

ps  Perhaps this is why the President would rather campaign than govern – Obama budget receives zero votes in Senate