Free Republic

<p>WASHINGTON - Social Security may top the Bush administration's domestic agenda, but Medicare's financial problems are more dire and Medicaid's are more immediate.</p> <p>The Medicare trust fund, which pays inpatient hospital costs and short-term nursing-home stays for the program's nearly 42 million seniors, is slated to become insolvent in 2019, more than 20 years before both of Social Security's insolvency date estimates.</p>