Tag: Medicare costs

Business briefcase, stethoscope and financial market charts

This year I, with my sidekick Michael Wicklein, took a more-careful-than-usual look at the Trustees Report for the Medicare program. After all, Medicare – like Social Security – relies on payroll tax revenues, so it’s useful to understand the competing needs.  Traditional Medicare is composed of two programs.  The first – Part A, Hospital Insuranc…

man holding stethoscope with piggy bank

The headlines from the 2023 Medicare Trustees Re­port were that the Hospital Insurance (HI) program faces a long-term deficit and will deplete its trust fund reserves in 2031 and that the rest of the Medicare program will require increasing amounts of general revenues. While true, the outlook for program costs is considerably more favorable than…