What is the long-run financial problem for Medicare?
What will be an ideal response?
Medicare is financed by payments into the system from current workers, with half the tax paid by workers (1.45%) and half the tax paid by employers (1.45%). The payments are made to current Medicare retirees, with any excess going into a Medicare Trust Fund. Medicare will experience financial problems in the future because the number of workers paying into the system is declining and the number of retirees receiving benefits is rising. Medicare is expected to exhaust its trust funds by 2024 and the percent of Medicare benefits covered by the Medicare tax will decline from 97 percent in 2025 to 72 percent in 2035.
You might also like to view...
Equality means distributing society's resources in the most efficient manner
a. True b. False Indicate whether the statement is true or false
What is a monopsony and how does a monopsonistic firm determine the wage rate to pay its employees?
What will be an ideal response?
One problem with the utilitarian principle is that it ignores
A) increasing marginal costs. B) decreasing marginal benefits. C) the costs of making income transfers. D) poor people.
Refer to the accompanying figure, which shows the market for cups of coffee. Consider the original supply and the original demand curve. If the government imposes a price ceiling of $1.00 on a cup of coffee, then there would be:
A. a short-term excess demand for coffee, followed by an increase in the equilibrium price. B. an excess supply of coffee. C. a new equilibrium at a price of $1.00 per cup and a quantity of 50 cups per hour. D. an excess demand for coffee.