Report: U.S. mortality to remain up until 2023
The federal government expects U.S. mortality rates to be 15 percent over pre-pandemic norms in 2021 and not return to normal levels until 2023, according to a report released Tuesday by the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare programs.
The trustees concluded that these elevated mortality rates, along with lower immigration and depressed fertility rates, have had a significant effect on the trust funds supporting both programs in the short term. But the virus’ long-term effects on America’s retirement system and health care system remain unclear, as the pandemic appears far from over.
More than 600,000 Americans have died in the coronavirus pandemic that began in early 2020, and case levels have increased in recent weeks, leading to projections of a spike in deaths later this year.
The new findings are from an annual report signed by four trustees responsible for tracking the health of two major U.S. trust funds supporting both Medicare and Social Security: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi, and Health and Human Services Director Xavier Becerra.
Senior administration officials described opposing forces that make it hard to determine how exactly the pandemic could effect the country’s retirement system after 2024.
On one hand, the people who succumbed to the virus were disproportionately older and immunocompromised, one official said, meaning that the surviving population may be somewhat healthier than had been projected. But COVID’s long-term effects could create widespread health problems for survivors, possibly creating new problems that weigh on the Medicare system for years.
Walsh said recent economic growth should bolster both programs for the long term.
“As our economy gets healthier, so do the trust funds that sustain Social Security and Medicare,” Walsh said in a statement. “We will continue working to deliver on the promise of financial security in retirement for all of America’s workers.”
Medicare is the country’s government-run health care system primarily for people over 65, as well as for younger people with disabilities.
Both Medicare and Social Security are under pressure from long-standing demographic changes.
Aging baby boomers are placing an increasing strain on the system as they reach retirement age, leave the workforce and consume more health care services. At the same time, declining fertility rates mean the share of the U.S. working population will diminish over the next several decades. The Medicare trust fund faces the most near-term economic challenges.
The trustees’ annual reports repeatedly have warned about the encroaching insolvency of Medicare. But subsequent administrations have failed to significantly alter the program in a way that would decisively ensure its long-term solvency.
Some budget hawks and fiscal conservatives view Medicare and Social Security as unaffordable entitlements that should be reined in rather than expanded. Some Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to expand the program’s eligibility requirements under a set of proposals being termed “Medicare for All.”
Perhaps owing to the program’s share of the federal budget — and the 61 million Americans who rely on it for things as varied as prescription medication, lab tests, surgery and hospice — efforts to modify it have been the subject of fierce partisan debate.
The Social Security system is expected to be able to pay its scheduled benefits in a timely manner until 2034, one year earlier than the previous year’s report had assumed. The changing forecast is from a depletion in tax income associated with the economic crisis, said a senior administration official familiar with the analysis.