Finances look worse for Medicare, Social Security (AP)

The United States is burning through its health care and retirement fund pools faster than planned, with the Medicare trust fund to be exhausted by 2024, five years earlier than expected, officials said Friday.A combination of higher costs and lower-than-expected revenues has worsened the outlook for Medicare as well as for Social Security, which will use up its huge trust fund in 2036, one year earlier than was projected last year, plan trustees said in their annual reports.

The United States is burning through its health care and retirement fund pools faster than planned, with the Medicare trust fund to be exhausted by 2024, five years earlier than expected, officials said.A combination of higher costs and lower-than-expected revenues has worsened the outlook for Medicare as well as for Social Security, which will use up its huge trust fund in 2036, one year earlier than was projected last year, plan trustees said in their annual reports.

Paul Ryan’s “budget roadmap” has terrified the GOP leadership, but thrilled conservative intellectuals with its calls for sharp cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and all other government programs combined with privatization of Medicare so that a larger share of your diminished benefit goes to for-profit insurance companies. Less widely discussed is the tax aspects of Ryan’s plan. As you would expect from a conservative plan, compared to Barack Obama’s tax ideas Ryan would raise less government revenue.

By Gaius Publius. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius. Cross posted from AmericaBlog

Every since the early eighties, when the Greenspan commission kicked the can down the road with a combination of tax increases and later retirement ages, analysts have been awaiting the day when the system would finally go into deficit.  That date has been sliding around between 2016 and 2020 for some years now, but the suspense is finally over:  the system is going into deficit this year.

Megan and Andrew Sullivan are having a squabble about how much it cost (and here).  I would remind everyone of this recent research result: