Is Medicare Likely to Go Broke? Research Paper Example

Currently, it appears that Medicare is likely to go broke. However, this isn’t expected to occur within the next few years and it’s important to consider that care offered by the provisions of the Affordable Care Act are supposed to eliminate the need for Medicare altogether. Despite this, President Obama attempted to budget Medicare so that it won’t fall out until 2024. This is likely to ensure that the healthcare reform is perfectly operational by this time so that there will be no gap in care for these individuals. However, critics of the president claim that his calculations are incorrect and Medicare will actually lose funding by 2016 (Roy, 2012).

While it is possible that Medicare will lose funding in a few years, regardless of the exact projection, it is important to understand that the program will only end if the budget continues to be spent in its current manner. The president is focusing on reducing the national deficit, which is a necessary step in ensuring that our economy recovers. In doing so, it is necessary to cut certain programs in order to pay back our debts. It is possible that in the future, a different president and Congress will have a budget that will not contribute to the death of Medicare if they find that healthcare reform is not an adequate option for elderly individuals. As such, it is important to keep in mind that Medicare going broke is only a current projection, not an actuality. To determine whether this will really be the case, it will be necessary to track healthcare reform and the federal government’s healthcare budget over the next few years to collect objective data concerning this trend. Without doing so, we cannot say whether Medicare will definitely go broke or not.

References

BeeuwkesBuntin M, Haviland AM, McDevitt R, and Sood N. (2011). Healthcare Spending and Preventive Care in High-Deductible and Consumer-Directed Health Plans. American Journal of Managed Care, 17(3): 222–230.

Roy, A. (2012). Trustees: Medicare Will Go Broke in 2016, If You Exclude Obamacare’s Double-Counting. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/04/23/trustees-medicare-will-go-broke-in-2016-if-you-exclude-obamacares-double-counting/