In this appendix, the Trustees present long-range actuarial estimates for the OASDI and Hospital Insurance (HI) programs both separately and on a combined basis. These estimates facilitate analysis of the adequacy of the income and asset reserves of these programs relative to their cost under current law. This appendix does not include estimates for the Supplementary Medical Insurance (
SMI) program because adequate financing is guaranteed in the law, and because the SMI program is not financed through a payroll tax. For more information on Medicare estimates, please see the
2014 Medicare Trustees Report.
The information in this appendix on combined operations, while significant, should not obscure the analysis of the financial status of the individual trust funds, which are legally separate and cannot be commingled. In addition, the factors which determine the costs of the OASI, DI, and HI programs differ substantially.
1
Comparing cost and
income rates for the OASDI and HI programs as percentages of
taxable payroll requires a note of caution. The taxable payrolls for the HI program are larger than those estimated for the OASDI program because: (1) a larger maximum taxable amount was established for the HI program in 1991, with the maximum eliminated altogether for the HI program in 1994; (2) a larger proportion of Federal, State, and local government employees are covered under the HI program; and (3) the earnings of railroad workers are included directly in the HI taxable payroll but not in the OASDI taxable payroll. (Railroad contributions for the equivalent of OASDI benefits are accounted for in a
net interchange that occurs annually between the OASDI and
Railroad Retirement programs.) As a result, the HI taxable payroll is about 25 percent larger than the OASDI taxable payroll throughout the long-range period.
Table VI.G2 shows the Trustees’ estimates of annual income rates and cost rates for the OASDI program and the HI program under the low-cost, intermediate, and high-cost sets of assumptions described earlier in this report. The income rates reflect the tax rates shown in table
VI.G1. For the HI program, the income rates reflect: (1) the additional 0.9 percent tax on employees for relatively high earnings; and (2) the portion of total payroll to which the 0.9 percent rate applies. Annual income and cost rates indicate the cash-flow operation of the programs. Therefore, income rates exclude
interest earned on trust fund asset reserves. Table
VI.G2 also shows annual balances, which are the differences between annual income rates and cost rates.
Table VI.G3 shows summarized values over the 25-year, 50-year, and 75-year
valuation periods. For each of those periods, the
summarized income rates include beginning trust fund asset reserves, and the
summarized cost rates include the cost of accumulating an ending fund reserve equal to 100 percent of annual cost at the end of the period.
The Trustees project that the OASDI and HI systems will each experience large actuarial deficits for the 25-year, 50-year, and 75-year valuation periods under the high-cost assumptions. Actuarial deficits under the intermediate assumptions are smaller than those for the high-cost assumptions for all three valuation periods. Under the low-cost assumptions, the HI system has a positive actuarial balance for all three valuation periods, while the actuarial balance for the OASDI system is positive for the 25-year period, slightly negative for the 50-year period, and slightly positive for the 75-year period.