The Future of Medicare and Medical Reform
Although the medical industry is continuing to expand, providing more jobs to healthcare degree holders every year, medicare is dwindling. Recent research has shown medicare will run out by 2017, instead of the earlier projection of 2019.
The decline in medicare funds is due to the decrease of taxable income, due to the decrease of jobs–so long as the unemployment rate is sky-high, there is not as much revenue for the government to collect from, which means government-funded sources are suffering.
This is part of the reason it is imperative to meet the deadlines for making medical records completely electronic by 2014. The government is on the ball to establish this as part of the dire need for healthcare reform.
For people seeking degrees in healthcare, that means that medical billing and coding is a particularly profitable, high-demand field. Working in the transition of paper medical records to electronic medical records as the government catches up to the downfall of medicare and the demand for reform does not necessarily take a complex degree, either–medical billing and coding is offered on the associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree, and master’s degree levels.
