HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Medicare will start running out of money in 2024 – 5 years earlier than projected last year — as a result of the sluggish economic recovery, the program’s trustees reported today. The outlook for the federal health insurance program that covers 47.5 million elderly and disabled Americans is a dramatic shift from last summer. That's when the trustees proudly projected that the new health law had extended the solvency of the program by 12 years from 2017 to 2029.