that total Medicare spending is on track to double from more than $1 trillion today to nearly $2 trillion by 2032.
The trustees’ data is sobering. In just eight years, nearly 78 million Medicare beneficiaries will face an automatic 11% payment cut in their hospital insurance benefits, and these cuts could come even sooner and strike even deeper if America is hit by recession. Congress has no choice but to act. Beyond threats to their hospital benefits, seniors’ premiums for their supplemental medical insurance—those benefits covering physician care and drug benefits—are also growing rapidly. Today, standard premiums and cost-sharing for physician and drug benefits combined equalof this year’s average Social Security benefit. Over the next five years, physician and outpatient cost increases alone will average about 9.7%, and prescription drug costs will grow at an annual average rate of 6.
But seniors’ premiums cover only 25% of total supplemental medical insurance costs. Taxpayers fund roughly three-fourths of these physician and drug costs through income taxes, so taxpayers will also get hit hard. While taxpayer funding for these services in 2022 accounted for a little more than 13% of all federal income and business taxes, that chunk of
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