This is more of a comment cleaner than anything else, but here we go……….

I was enjoy the Sunday NY Times this morning, and wayyyyyyyyyy in the very back of the paper was a little article about the recent forecast for Medicare projecting solvency through 2029. The thrust of this report was that the health care reform would help matters, and in the report were quite a few rosy assumptions about how much better the economy would be getting Real Soon Now.

What's interesting is that Richard Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare and Medicaid, had this to say about the analysis, buried in the footnotes:

"…the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range……or the long range."

I don't think this needs any additional commentary from me.