Image via WikipediaThe healthcare reform law significantly improved the outlook for Medicare, the program's trustees said Thursday in their annual report.
Medicare's hospital trust fund will be solvent for 12 years more than projected last year, almost entirely because of savings from healthcare reform, said the trustees, which include Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Commissioner of Social Security Michael J. Astrue.
"The outlook for Medicare has indeed improved greatly compared to this time last year, thanks to the Affordable Care Act," Sebelius said at a Thursday morning press conference.
Because of the projected savings under the healthcare reform law, Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is not scheduled to be exhausted until 2029, the trustees said. While Medicare is still not financially sustainable in the long term when faced with an aging population, the report offers a rosier view than last year's report, which predicted bankruptcy of the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund in 2017.
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