Medicare's financially troubled
Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will remain solvent until the year 2023, eight
years longer than projected last year, the program's trustees reported Thursday.
Trustees cited a combination of factors, including higher receipts from
payroll taxes and lower spending due to fraud-fighting efforts and cuts imposed
by the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, with the increased solvency projection. The
estimate represents the longest period of projected solvency since 1974.
Noting that when the Clinton Administration took office in 1993, the trust
fund was scheduled for exhaustion in 1999, Health and Human Services Secretary
Donna Shalala said, "if Medicare were a person instead of a program, this year
it would be quoting Mark Twain's famous line: Reports of my death are greatly
exaggerated."
Both Shalala and Treasury Lawrence Summers, however, said that Congress
should not use the good financial news about Medicare as an excuse not to act to
shore up the program's long-term financial situation. "This news, welcome as it
is, does not eliminate the challenge of an aging society," Summers said.
That sentiment was echoed on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress said
they remain determined to try to address both structural Medicare issues as well
as finding a way to add an outpatient prescription drug benefit to the program.
"We cannot -- and must not -- let this good news make us complacent in our
efforts to improve the ability of Social Security and Medicare to meet the needs
of seniors," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bill Roth (R-DE).
Said House Ways and Means ranking Democrat Charles Rangel (D-NY), "The
Medicare trustees report also proves that we can provide a decent Medicare
prescription drug benefit to our seniors without any delay. There is no excuse
now for inaction on prescription drugs."
