How to pay for Medicare’s next 50 years
(By – Kelley Holland, www.cnbc.com)
Medicare turns 50 on Thursday, and that’s not all the program’s overseers have to celebrate. Before Medicare was created in 1965, almost half of all Americans over 65 had no health insurance; in 2015, all but 2 percent do. Medicare’s critics are legion, but its spending per beneficiary has increased more slowly than private health insurance spending per enrollee: Medicare’s spending has grown an average of 7.5 percent annually between 1969 and 2013, compared with private health insurance’s 9.1 percent. Read more…