Securing Medicare’s Future: What are the Issues?

March 1997

The National Academy of Social Insurance mounted a project, Restructuring Medicare for the Long Term, which was designed to produce objective and timely analysis of some of the most important questions facing those who will be charged with restructuring Medicare.

This interim report of the project’s steering committee describes Medicare’s most significant long-term challenges: assuring the program’s long-term fiscal health, ensuring its ability to protect beneficiaries against the costs of needed health care, and providing social goods such as the training of medical professionals and the maintenance of health facilities for uninsured and underserved populations. The report also outlines the project’s framework for addressing the key research and policy questions those challenges pose for policymakers, and describes work under way on the project.