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Source link: http://blog.mises.org/1748/trustees-see-medicare-broke-by-2019/

Trustees see Medicare broke by 2019

March 24, 2004 by

“The Medicare hospital trust fund will be insolvent by 2019, seven years earlier than previously forecast, if it continues on its current path, government-appointed trustees warned in their annual report Tuesday”

And Social Security will be broke by 2042.

{ 2 comments }

Peter White March 24, 2004 at 5:29 pm

Aren’t these forecasts meaningless? Since the “trust funds” are simply bookkeeping entries, not funds kept in trust, the money isn’t really there. It’s just that when the US’s receipts from the taxpayers is no longer greater than what the US is paying out in Social Security checks, the so called trust fund will start to go down. They claim that the “trust fund” now has some billions of dollars in it. But it’s just one part of the government owing another part of the government future tax revenue. All of the money supposedly in the “trust fund” has already been spent on aircraft carrier battle groups, nuclear weapons, and the allegedly fatherless children of unwed “ladies”.

People born in 1946 turn 65 in 2011, so it shouldn’t be more than twelve years or so before the Social Security tax receipts no longer cover the cost of the payments to baby boomers. That’s when the unpleasant remnants of digestion should enter the ventilation system. It should be fun to watch, if you’re into black comedy.

Alexander Coleman March 25, 2004 at 12:27 pm

Since the Republicans are merely interested in half-measures for Social Security–if that–and the Democrats dare not even bring it up (Dennis Kucinich even making a point of it in many of his speeches, yelling, “Social Security is fine until at least 2042!”–by the way, he bankrupted Cleveland as mayor), it sounds like we are all headed, full steam ahead, into the iceberg and nobody except libertarian “fanatics” are warning anybody (they have been for decades but finally their warnings are being heard by thinking Americans).

Look for whoever gets elected in 2008 to start printing money like it’s Argentina and raise taxes dramatically. Americans–especially the older ones–are now addicted to this poison and, it would seem, are willing to sell out their souls for some of that federal dough, truly believing that FDR’s grand boondoggle is a “public pension program.” Woe to all of us in the upcoming years. The great irony will be that whichever socialist wins in 2008 will offer statist solutions to statist problems, a characteristic of the federal government that never goes away.

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