trustees break with bush

Trustees Break With Bush Administration, Say Medicare Is Real Crisis

We reported on this blog weeks ago that, while the Bush administration

doggedly focuses on Social Security, Medicare is actually in much

worse shape. Now, in a report published March 24 in the Washington

Post, it is revealed that two independent trustees overseeing Social

Security and Medicare have broken with the administration to point out

the urgent need to address Medicare's ills.

Trustees Thomas R. Saving and John L. Palmer say that Medicare's

financial condition has "deteriorated dramatically" since 2000 while

Social Security has actually stabilized and even improved a bit. Both

agree that Social Security is in need of changes, but note that

Medicare's trust fund is projected to be depleted a full two decades

before Social Security's!

"The question in my mind is why are we even talking about saving

Social Security?" said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative commentator with

the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Looking 75 years into the future, according the Trustees, Medicare

expenditures are projected to approach 14 percent of the economy -

nearly the total tax take today. (!) That is nearly triple the same

Medicare projections made in 2000.

In other words, Medicare's costs are exploding exponentially and no

one really knows where it will end.

Unlike Social Security, which can be fixed through a combination of

many tactical options (cutting benefits, increasing returns on trust

fund investments, creating private accounts, encouraging Americans to

save more, etc.), Medicare has few options.

We're all going to get old and we're all going to need increasing

amounts of health care.

In fact, the only real way we can control Medicare (and Medicaid,

which a whole other crisis not even addressed here), aside from

crushing our children and grandchildren under a weight of taxes that

will reduce their standard of living compared to ours, is to get

healthier and stay healthier!

Chronic illnesses, especially those attributed to obesity, account for

the lion's share of all healthcare expenses. In fact, a new RAND study

shows that obesity causes far more chronic health conditions than

smoking, and identifies weight reduction as an "urgent public health

priority."