Political Quotes

“as you may have heard, today marks the 50th anniversary of both Medicare and Medicaid. While the last half century has seen a pretty robust debate about the merits of these programs, today there is no question that they provide significant and vital elements to our Nation's safety net. This week many are celebrating the lives that have been saved and improved by Medicare and Medicaid over the last 50 years. While this is appropriate, I hope that we will also take the time to look at how these programs will function over the next 50 years. Let's start with Medicare. Medicare is, quite simply, a massive program designed to provide care to our Nation's seniors. Currently, it covers more than 50 million beneficiaries--roughly one-sixth of the current U.S. population--and processes more than 1 billion claims a year. Last week the Medicare board of trustees issued its report for 2015, which once again detailed the fiscal challenges facing the Medicare Program. For example, in 2014 alone, we spent roughly $613 billion on Medicare expenditures. That is roughly 14 percent of the Federal budget and 3.5 percent of our gross domestic product for a single health care program. In coming years, these numbers are only going to go up as more baby boomers retire and become Medicare beneficiaries. Over the next 10 years, the trustees project that the number of Medicare beneficiaries will expand by 30 percent.…”