America’s entitlement programmes are rapidly approaching insolvency
The politics of reforming them are already broken
![Bandages are used to stick GoFundMe pages of patients who had use crowdfunding to cover medical expenses, during a rally for "Medicare for All," at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America headquarters in Washington, April 29, 2019. (Al Drago/The New York Times)Credit: New York Times / Redux / eyevineFor further information please contact eyevinetel: +44 (0) 20 8709 8709e-mail: info@eyevine.comwww.eyevine.com](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20230415_USP004.jpg)
In some circles, the annual report from the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees is as hotly anticipated as a thriller. Admittedly, those circles are not very wide. Read the latest report, released on March 31st, and you can see why most people are happy to avoid the gruesome hobby.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Third-rail thriller”
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