Medicare

Bankrupt in seven years

Medicare was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson with the promise that

no longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes eaten away simply because they are carrying out deep moral obligations to their parents.

Absent reform, the program will end up delivering exactly what it was created to avoid: it will consume the prosperity of today's younger generation to finance an unsustainable path of spending

The problem is that the program, which covers more than 45 million Americans, is quickly going bankrupt. One of the major causes of their fiscal imbalance has been Medicare’s inability to control costs.The CBO found that total spending per Medicare enrollee grew at 10.6% annually while the privately insured grew at 7.7%.The result of this backwards bottom line is that the trust fund is “projected to be exhausted during 2017.” That is a mere seven years from now.

Sadly most people are resigned to the fact that Medicare will eventually fail.A recently Zogby poll found that 47% of young adults believed Medicare would not be around by the time their children were eligible for benefits; another 33% were unsure.This is simply unacceptable. Moreover, it is why our generation must lead the charge to reform this broken program before it is too late.