Exhausted in 9 Years



Deroy Murdoch

Newsmax - "The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is projected to become exhausted in 2020." As plain as the sun, that sentence appears on page 4 of the Congressional Budget Office's "March 2011 Medicare Baseline," released March 18. Those 12 words encapsulate the gargantuan problem that undergirds today's national yelling match over Medicare. It hardly matters whether one loves or hates Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and his "Path to Prosperity." If America does nothing, the CBO calculates that Medicare will run dry on September 30, 2020. If that fiscal year's last day sounds distant, it isn't. That milestone is five fewer months into the future than 9/11 was in the past. From $239.4 billion in FY 2011, Medicare's primary Trust Fund drops to $20.5 billion in FY 2019. The next year, it reaches zero. Zip. Zilch. Washington Democrats are in malignant denial about all this. Read full column here: News New Mexico

Exhausted in 9 Years