NYT:Entitlement Costs Are Expected to Soar (beyond Bush est.)

Entitlement Costs Are Expected to Soar
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and ROBERT PEAR

Published: March 19, 2004


WASHINGTON, March 18 — Trustees for Medicare and Social Security will report next week that the two entitlement programs will eventually need more than twice as much money as previously estimated, experts who helped prepare the calculations say.

The new Medicare program for prescription drugs could in itself cost up to $7 trillion over the next 75 years, they said.

The annual reports on Social Security and Medicare will include new estimates showing that the total gap between the cost of promised benefits and the revenues to pay for them is close to $50 trillion, the experts said. By contrast, the Bush administration estimated last year that the long-term gap was $18 trillion over the next 75 years.

Few of today's workers will be alive in 75 years, and such long-range forecasts are notoriously uncertain. But federal officials and experts on social welfare policy agree that the two programs face huge shortfalls, and they say that the projections, though imperfect, are an essential tool for policy makers....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/politics/19MEDI.html?hp

and our children will be paying for this for then next 75 years.

I guess this is bad news?

Let's ask Meanspin and Cheney and RayGun about how deficits don't matter.

:nuke:

All the shit that's fit to stink

to payroll contributions (wage base increased or god forbid maybe all wages taxed) or a minor reduction to future benefits by move from today's Reagan age 67 "normal" retirement that was passed in 1984 to a age 70 "normal" retirement for retirements post 2042, thereby making the benefit paid out at 62 a little smaller.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/politics/19MEDI.html

Entitlement Costs Are Expected to Soar
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and ROBERT PEAR

Published: March 19, 2004


ASHINGTON, March 18 — Trustees for Medicare and Social Security will report next week that the two entitlement programs will eventually need more than twice as much money as previously estimated, experts who helped prepare the calculations say.<snip>

In their report to Congress last year, the trustees of Medicare and Social Security — four administration officials and two public representatives — said Social Security had $3.5 trillion of "unfunded obligations" over the next 75 years.

The gap looks larger when experts peer further into the future. When trustees and actuaries analyzed the "infinite future," they estimated that Social Security's unfinanced obliga tions would total $10.5 trillion, or three times as much as the gap in the next 75 years.

Analysts say the looming shortfalls for Social Security, big as they are, can be filled with comparatively modest adjustments to payroll contributions or future benefits.

Most analysts believe Medicare shortfalls will be far bigger and more difficult to control, because medical costs have been rising much faster than other prices. <snip>

"Even going 75 years into the future is a wild guess," Ms. Moon (economist and former Medicare trustee) said. "So many things can happen in health care between now and then."