The year Medicare becomes insolvent, according to the Medicare Trustees Report for 2012, released in April. The date is the same as in the prior year’s report but is eight years later than the trustees believe funds would expire without the provisions contained in the Affordable Care Act to reward efficient, quality care. The trustees, who include the secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Social Security departments, say Medicare is stable for now, and Medicare expenditures in 2011, at $549 billion, were lower than expected. But action is still needed to secure its long-term future.1 The report states that Medicare’s Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund is financially balanced, although some critics have offered far less sanguine projections for the future of the Medicare program, based on its annual and cumulative cash shortfalls.
Related Articles
The Case for Hospitalists’ Involvement in Hospital Contract Negotiations
July 3, 2012
Physician advisors and hospitalists bring indispensable value to contract negotiations between hospital systems and payers. Traditionally, contracting has been managed primarily by finance and...
Carrying On the Timeless Mission of Medicine
July 3, 2012
It’s easy to think of the times we live in as unprecedented—for each of us, it is. Yet, as we all know, history repeats itself, and our experiences are usually not quite as unprecedented as we...
Naturalized Citizens and Noncitizen Immigrant Healthcare Workers are Important Members of the Workforce
July 3, 2012
Clinical question: How do the Trump administration’s plans for deporting undocumented immigrants and some individuals with temporary protected status impact the already strained healthcare...
Don’t Throw Away Your Shot: Negotiations
July 3, 2012
Many of us did not go into medicine to negotiate, and so feel uncomfortable with negotiations. However, we negotiate more often in our day-to-day lives than we realize (those with children definitely...