Apathy Is The Biggest Threat To Medicare And The Federal Budget

Nearly 15 years ago, Barack Obama tried to sell Obamacare by attempting to raise alarms about what would happen to our health care system “if we do nothing.” A decade and a half on, no thanks to Obama’s health care law, “nothing” is what is happening regarding some of the biggest fiscal problems our nation faces.

Obamacare didn’t solve the fiscal problems associated with the retirement of the Baby Boom generation — on the contrary, in fact. By allowing lawmakers and presidents to ignore those problems for going on two decades, the law delayed but did not prevent our fiscal reckoning, making it all the more painful when that day finally arrives.

Trust Fund Gimmicks

In 2009, right before the enactment of Obamacare, Medicare’s trustees reported that the program would become insolvent in 2017, eight years away. But within months after the law’s passage, the 2010 trustees report put off insolvency until 2029, a 12-year improvement. The report also reduced the unfunded obligations of the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund from $13.4 trillion to $2.4 trillion over 75 years — a more than 82 percent reduction in unfunded obligations.

Did Obamacare suddenly improve Medicare’s finances by such dramatic leaps and bounds? In a word, no. Every dollar that supposedly extended the life of the Medicare trust fund was also used to pay for Obamacare, as then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius conceded in testimony before Congress:

Obamacare only improved Medicare’s finances on paper.