Money issues facing the Medicare and Social Security programs could “further cripple the country’s fragile long-term care system,” LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan told the McKnight’s Business Daily.
The programs continue to face “significant financing issues,” according to an annual report released Friday by the Treasury Department in conjunction with Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Social Security Administration.
“Today, chronically underfunded providers struggle to deliver the quality care that’s desperately needed in our communities; projected financial shortfalls for either Social Security or Medicare will further cripple the country’s fragile long-term care system,” Sloan said. “If Congress and the administration don’t act now to shore up these two critical programs, older adults and families will suffer.”
The report projects that Social Security’s reserves will be depleted by 2034, one year sooner than estimated last year. At that point, continuing program income will allow that trust fund to pay out 77% of scheduled benefits, according to the report. The shorter timeframe is the result of the trustees decreasing the expected levels of gross domestic product and labor productivity by approximately 3%, worsening the outlook for Social Security’s combined fund over the projection window.
Trustees are slightly more optimistic with respect to Medicare only insofar as the forecasted “go-broke” date has been pushed back by three years. Medicare would be able to cover only 89% of costs for beneficiaries’ nursing home stays, home healthcare and hospital visits starting in 2031.
The reports “reaffirm that both programs face long-term funding challenges that will only be exacerbated by a rapidly aging population,” Argentum Senior Vice President of Public Affairs Maggie Elehwany said Friday.
Assisted living plays a role in extending the life of the Medicare program, she suggested. Although assisted living communities do not receive Medicare dollars as nursing homes and home health providers do, the coordinated care, including social and preventive care, offered by assisted living keeps older adults healthier and saves Medicare dollars, Elehwany said.
The Medicare program, she said, “benefits from the cost savings that assisted living provides through improved quality of life and better health outcomes for their more than 1 million residents across the country.”
