The trustees for both entitlement programs released their annual report and it looks like Medicare's good for an extra 12 years thanks to President Obama.
And in a startling case of no news is good news, the trustees decided "little has changed from last year" as far as Social Security goes. Despite the fact that, for the first time, Social Security is paying out more than it's taking in right now, Commissioner Michael J. Astrue insists this is "not a cause for panic."
Yeah, because that's the kind of thinking that's worked well for us so far.
Never mind his qualification that even if the trust fund ran out tomorrow, we'd still have enough to pay "75 percent of benefits." That should make all those retiring seniors feel safe and secure, even without a cost of living increase next year. But, all that aside, the problem we run into here - at least with regard to Medicare - is this so-called rosy outlook is based on a single flawed premise.
The trustees wrote this report assuming Medicare will, in fact, cut doctors' payment rates by 23 percent on Dec. 1 and again in January, as mandated by law. Now we all know that's not going to happen, since Congress has been overriding these cuts for years now.
To make matters worse - and the math even more fuzzy - the authors of this report expect health care productivity numbers to match (or better) those of the rest of the economy. This despite the simple fact that health care has almost always outpaced inflation.
I'm not sure Willy Loman harbored this much optimism.
