Recession walloping Social Security and Medicare

The continuing U.S. recession has worsened the financial health of the government's two biggest benefit programs, figures released Tuesday showed. Medicare, the main medical program for the elderly and disabled, will even pay out more in benefits this year than the government collects in taxes for it. The findings released by trustees of Medicare and Social Security, the government's pension system begun during the Great Depression of the 1930s, is a blow to President Barack Obama's plans for a major reconfiguration of the health care delivery system in the country. A major part of his campaign last year was to bring almost universal government-run health care to the United States, one of the few developed countries whose medical systems are based on private medicine. Both Social Security and Medicare are financed through payroll contributions from workers and employers. The findings in the trustees' annual checkup on the programs did not come as a surprise. Private economists had been predicting that the dates the programs would begin to pay out more than they take in and that the dates the trust funds would be insolvent would occur sooner given the economic recession. The deep recession, the worst in decades, has resulted in a loss of 5.7 million jobs since it began in December 2007. The unemployment rate hit a 25-year high of 8.9 percent in April. Fewer people working means less being paid into the trust funds for the benefits programs.