Medicare will have to tap its trust fund this year to keep up with expenditures and is on a course to become insolvent by 2019, trustees reported Tuesday. This is seven years sooner than what the trustees estimated last year in their annual report.
This heightened threat could be the ramifications of the Medicare reform law, which will increase costs by more than $500 billion over 10 years, the report said.
Provisions of the law “raise serious doubt about the sustainability of Medicare under current financing arrangements,” the trustees said.
Social Security’s finances showed little change, and its projected insolvency date remained 2042.
