Social Security and Medicare will not be able to fully pay benefits in just over a decade if lawmakers don’t act to address the pending shortfalls, according to reports released Monday by the entitlement programs’ trustees. While the trust funds’ finances improved slightly, they remain in dire shape.

Social Security will live to see another year before its trust funds cumulatively run out of money, and Medicare Part A’s trust fund depletion date gained another two years – but the clock is still ticking for the government to fix the insolvency issue. 

Without any changes in the next 13 years, Social Security beneficiaries can expect to see a 20% cut to their Social Security checks in 2035, according to the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees report released on Thursday. For Medicare Part A beneficiaries, the...

The Medicare trust fund will be exhausted in 2036, and the combined Social Security trust fund will become exhausted in 2035, the programs’ trustees projected on Monday.

The report illustrates the long-term problems facing the entitlement programs, on which tens of millions of people rely. Nevertheless, it contained good news in that the deadlines have been moved back a bit from last year’s projections.

Millions of older Americans are at risk of losing some of their Social Security benefits after defaulting on student loans, Democratic lawmakers said in a letter urging the Biden administration to act.

Why it matters: Seniors are one of the highest risk categories with reports showing nearly 40% of borrowers aged 65 or older in default. Federal programs that claw those funds back mean seniors lose as much as $2,500 in Social Security benefits annually.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that Medicare should negotiate prices for at least 50 prescription drugs each year — up from the president’s current target.

“Medicare should not be limited to negotiating just 20 drugs per year,” the White House said in a fact sheet released ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday earlier reported on by CNBC.

“The President is proposing that Medicare be able to negotiate prices for the major drugs that seniors rely on, like those used for treating heart disease, cancer and diabetes,” the fact sheet added.

Dean Phillips, the Democratic congressmember challenging Joe Biden, is endorsing “Medicare for All” legislation, aligning himself with the progressive movement in one of its longstanding gripes with the White House.

The Minnesota representative, for the first time, is signing onto a bill that would create a single-payer health care system in America.

More Americans are optimistic that Social Security benefits will be available when they retire, according to a Gallup poll.

Among non-retires, 50 percent expect Social Security to pay them a benefit when they retire, compared to 47 percent who don’t think the system will help them.

Gallup reports it’s an increase in non-retirees from readings taken between 2005 and 2015 when majorities of non-retirees polled said they didn’t think they would receive benefits from the system.