Munnell, Alicia H. and Michael Wicklein. 2023.
The brief’s key findings are:
- Headlines from the 2023 Medicare Trustees’ Report focused on the program’s looming financial concerns.
- But the Report itself did not contain bad news – in fact, it showed modest improvements over the prior year.
- And, more strikingly, the outlook is much better than it was a decade ago, even under assumptions that policymakers curb some cost controls.
- Nevertheless, Medicare still faces significant challenges:
- its costs are high because it operates within the very expensive U.S. health care system; and
- at the same time, it has serious gaps in insurance protection.
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