Report Emphasizes Shortfall in Medicare (this is the Crisis)--not SS

[rodeodance]

Looks the WH has been caught sleeping --or ignoring this crisis--and I will call a rose a rose!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59227-2005Mar23?language=printer
Report Emphasizes Shortfall in Medicare

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page A01

The two independent trustees overseeing Social Security and Medicare broke with the Bush administration's trustees yesterday, saying Medicare's financial problems far exceed Social Security's and are in urgent need of attention.

Republican Thomas R. Saving and Democrat John L. Palmer said Social Security's condition has changed little since they joined the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees in 2000. But in the trustees' report released yesterday, they wrote that Medicare's prospects have "deteriorated dramatically" with rising medical costs and the addition in 2003 of a prescription drug benefit.

"The financial outlook for Social Security has improved marginally since 2000," wrote Saving and Palmer. "In sharp contrast, Medicare's financial outlook has deteriorated dramatically over the past five years and is now much worse that Social Security's."

The three trustees from the Bush Cabinet -- Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt and Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao -- chose to emphasize Social Security's problems almost exclusively at the report's release........

[Robert Oak]

1. they won't even mention this

because the solution involves regulation of the pharmaceuticals and insurance companies.