Redefining Medicare's long-term financial health: a closer look at the "Medicare funding warning" in the trustees' report.

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) requires a new fiscal analysis of Medicare’s finances as part of the annual Medicare Trustees’ Report. This analysis is intended to supplement the separate analyses of the Hospital Insurance (HI) and Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) Trust Funds. While the Trustees are not required to include this new analysis until 2005, they did so in the 2004 report “[d]ue to the interest in this new measure.” This Issue Brief poses questions and provides answers about this new financial analysis of Medicare.