Medicare will go broke in 2024

The Medicare Hospitalization Insurance (HI) fund will be totally exhausted by 2024:  "Medicare’s HI Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures than it receives in income in all future years. The projected date of HI Trust Fund exhaustion is 2024, five years earlier than estimated in last year’s report, at which time dedicated revenues would be sufficient to pay 90 percent of HI costs."

This is a ticking time bomb.  The choices are either massive tax increases or massive spending cuts. Medicare will be spending more than $1 trillion per year by 2024, and it will be very difficult to cut spending.

Medicare Projected Expentitures

2012 572
2013 607
2014 643
2015 676
2016 716
2017 760
2018 810
2019 865
2020 932

Source: http://www.cms.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2011.pdf , pg. 51, Intermediate estimates.

After 2020, the projected expenditures are given as a percent of GDP as follows.  Percents for dates between these would be interpolated.
2020 3.99%
2025 4.59%
2030 5.16%
2035 5.56%
2040 5.77%
2045 5.87%
2050 5.94%