STAT+: Medicare gets a big (unofficial) surprise: a 17-year extension on when it'll run dry

Medicare’s financial future unexpectedly got a lot rosier, at least according to some federal budget wonks. 

The Congressional Budget Office recently published its long-term predictions of the federal budget and buried a big surprise for people who follow the Medicare program. The government’s primary piggy bank that pays for Medicare benefits won’t be depleted until 2052 — 17 years later than what CBO analysts predicted last year. 

“It kind of was a shocker to me,” said Bill Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center who started his career at the CBO when it was first established in 1975. Hoagland and his health care colleagues shared the CBO report and pored over the Medicare estimates. 

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