The Affordable Care Act, Medicare costs, and retirement security

Abstract

The brief's key findings are: (1) The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) included roughly 165 provisions to improve Medicare’s finances. (2) The Medicare Trustees Report, which reflects the ACA provisions, shows dramatically lower costs for Medicare in the future. (3) The Medicare actuaries also produce alternative projections assuming that the legislated restraints on growth in payments to health providers are not feasible. (4) A review of both sets of projections over the past six years shows that the gap between them is narrowing due to declines in the alternative cost projections. (5) However, a significant gap still remains, which underscores the inherent uncertainty involved in long-range projections.