Medicare to exhaust hospital funding by 2024, US says

The deal President Barack Obama made last year with Republicans to reduce the U.S. deficit may have stalled a worsening in the financial condition of Medicare. The debt-reduction legislation included cuts to Medicare payments that will be automatically enacted in 2013. Those reductions are offsetting gloomier assumptions about the nation's future economic performance, leading to no change in the 2024 date that trustees said Medicare will exhaust its main trust fund. The insolvency date didn't change, in part, because of 2 percent payment cuts that were part of the congressional debt- reduction deal, according to a report from the trustees.