The Obama administration can take solace in some favorable news to become official later this week, as the annual Medicare and Social Security trustees report detailing the entitlement programs’ fiscal health becomes public. The report says that the budget will realize approximately $8B in savings at the dawn of reform, with a trajectory of almost a half a trillion in overall savings by the end of the 2010s.

Although not considered a particularly incendiary demographic with respect to Obama’s reform goals, the nation’s senior citizens have expressed concern over the solvency of Medicare over the next decade. It is safe to assume that the administration will use this news as a talking point to assuage those fears — in addition to running ads like this as a surrogate method.

Critics of the Obama admin’s plan to trim Medicare and Medicaid costs are quick to point out the presumed diversion of those implied savings into subsidies for the uninsured over the next decade — a move, they say, does nothing to retain solvency into the 2020s or save on healthcare costs in the long term. | LINK to report [PDF]

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