With release of trustees' report, Medicare's finances likely to get even more attention

The trustees who oversee Medicare and Social Security say both programs face long-term financial problems and, unless Congress intervenes, will be insolvent in the coming decades. Medicare's circumstances are more precarious because of the impact of rising health care costs.

The Associated Press: Social Security Changes Off Table, Problems Remain
Congress is putting off changes to Social Security, but the massive retirement and disability program still faces long-term financial problems from an aging population and an economy that has been slow to rebound. Those problems are getting new attention Friday as the trustees who oversee Social Security and Medicare release their annual reports on the programs' finances. Medicare is in worse shape than Social Security because it is also being hit by rising health care costs. But both programs will become insolvent in the coming decades, unless Congress acts, according to the trustees (Ohlemacher, 5/13).

MSNBC: What To Look For In Social Security, Medicare Forecasts
With Congress and President Barack Obama focused on ways to reduce the extraordinarily large deficits and debt, Friday's release of the annual reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees is a timely political event. The trustees' job is to examine the financing of the nation's two massive spending programs for older people and the disabled. The trustees rely on the government's actuaries — the people who actually crunch the numbers on mortality, immigration, employment, and other factors to calculate the programs' solvency over the next 75 years (Curry, 5/12).