Conclusion
The ACA makes significant progress toward making Medicare financially viable. But while it is projected that the Medicare HI Trust Fund is adequately financed until 2029, and the Social Security OASI and DI Trust Funds are adequately financed until 2040 and 2018, respectively, the significant longer term financial imbalances of the programs still need to be addressed.
The sooner action is taken to address the long-run financial imbalances, the more reform options will be available, and the more time there will be to phase in changes so that those affected will have adequate time to prepare
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
AL LINDQUIST
great work as usual Jack–I have read it twice.
now you know why Elon Musk is needed–now he need not be so extreme–but all this talk and pronouncements by politicians who control the purse strings is nothing but hot air and unless you are extreme nothing will happen.
Elon needs to get started on Social Security & Medicare.
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And, of course, the 2010 report was issued very early in President Obama’s two terms. On June 1, 2016, five years later, President Obama said:
“… We can’t afford to weaken Social Security. We should be strengthening Social Security. And not only do we need to strengthen its long-term health, it’s time we finally made Social Security more generous, and increased its benefits so that today’s retirees and future generations get the dignified retirement that they’ve earned. And we could start paying for it by asking the wealthiest Americans to contribute a little bit more. They can afford it. I can afford it. …”
The next day, he offered specific legislation to resolve the well known funding challenge that had been identified during President Clinton’s first term in office (On November 5th, 1993: President Bill Clinton, by Executive Order #12878, created the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement Reform (the Danforth Commission) nearly 25 years earlier. NOT!
No proposal was ever made, nor have Trump, Biden, or Trump 2 made this a priority.
The fool Trump has an opportunity, in the last year of his 2nd Administration, to take credit for “saving” Social Security without cutting any existing retiree’s benefit or cutting the vast majority of future retiree’s benefits, by raising funding (and resolving the short and intermediate funding issues), by increasing the 12.4% tax rate to 16.4%, to take effect a year or so after he leaves office (January 1, 2030), by raising the 6.2% paid by employers to 10.2% (which will hide it from workers who are not paying attention). At the same time, he could prospectively reduce the wage base (currently $176,100) to perhaps $100,000, so he can claim that he is cutting the Social Security benefit for higher paid Americans who retire in the future.
Those actions will disproportionately impact a larger percentage of individuals who wouldn’t vote for a Republican successor anyway (as opposed to other solutions, such as applying the tax on wages in excess of today’s wage base, or the proverbial $400,000).
Assuming the R’s retain control of both the house and senate, I think there are 5 – 10 Democratic senators who would join the populist Republican faction sign on to this effort to take credit for “saving” Social Security which would allow them to blame Republicans for increasing taxes paid by employers – and suggest that this solution avoids raising taxes on low- and middle-income Americans.
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I like Benefit Jacks proposal. It is thinking out of the box and even though the devil is in the details,as always, it could improve on the current scheme.
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“The ACA makes significant progress toward making Medicare financially viable.”
Nope. All the ACA accomplished, in terms of funding, was to increase the annual deficit and the national debt, where a portion of the borrowed money was deposited in the HI trust fund.
Post-ACA, March 23, 2010, we have added almost $26 Trillion to our national debt – that is an average of over $1.5 Trillion a year, each and every year!
President Obama in his big health care speech to Congress, September 9, 2009:
“… First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize. …”
Really, after March 23, 2010, he and his Administration had 6+ more years (through January 20, 2017) to implement spending cuts when deficits worsened. Keep in mind that the American economy recovered from the 2008-2009 recession – in JUNE 2009, just five months after President Obama took office!!!!
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