What Americans Will Pay If Congress Fails to Reform Medicare: The State and Congressional District Impact

Medicare's increasingly dangerous financial plight leaves Congress with only two options if the program is to continue providing health care to seniors: either restructure and reform the pro- grain or significantly increase payroll taxes on America's businesses and working families. While payroll taxes technically are shared between employers and employees, in reality most taxes on busi- ness are shifted to workers in the form of reduced wages or compensation-in some cases, even job loss. Thus, any new payroll tax to shore up the financially failing Medicare system will be another tax on America's working families. Medicare's seven-member Board of Trustees, which includes President Clinton's Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Labor, has determined that the Medicare Hospitalization (HI, or Part A) Trust Fund, which finances hospital services to the nation's elderly, will be insolvent in the year 2002.

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