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By D. FRENCH SLAUGHTER JR. .*• Member of(onffre8o
Early in the 101st Congress, the • pattle lines are once again being .drawn over an increasingly contenI tious piece of the federal budget puz• - e: ,h°w to meet the health care - JJeeds of our rapidly-growing senior ” population in an era of spending con• fctraints imposed on Medicare by the • federal deficit. .; Once again, stop-gap proposals . such as freezing Medicare payments . to hospitals and doctors are the focus of attention, while Congress continues to ignore the long-term issue of impending Medicare bankruptcy. ; 3and-aid solutions might enable Medicare to tread water in the short-term, but the coming tidal iwave of retirees will sink the pro-am unless we act now to put the program on sound financial footing. . To insure the solvency of Medi-Care over the long term, this week I • am reintroducing the Health Care ♦Savings Account Act. This legis.tetion will allow individuals to estab.Esh voluntary, tax-favored personal ;savings accounts to meet health care ■heeds in retirement. By decreasing •the demand for scarce Medicare dol• lars, the Health Care Saving Account (HCSA) option could help to solve Medicare’s long-term financing problems without tax increases, freezes on providers, or benefit cuts.
The need for a long-term solution is clear. In their 1988 annual report to Congress, the Medicare trustees estimated that the hospital insurance program (Medicare Part A) will begin running deficits in 1998 and will be exhausted in 2005.
Thus, according to this estimate, by the year 2005 the Medicare trust fund will be unable to pay promised benefits to current and future retirees counting on Medicare. As in years past, the Medicare trustees repeated their warning:
“Because of the magnitude of the projected actuarial deficit in the Hospital Insurance program and the probability that the Hospital Insurance trust fund will be exhausted shortly after the end of this century, the Board believes that early eorrecL- _1_
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