Issued by: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)

Issue Date: April 22, 2020

In the 2020 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, the demographic factors used to project Medicare expenditures were improved to reflect the increasing longevity of Medicare beneficiaries. Specifically, the demographic factors now account for the changing mix of Medicare enrollees over time on the basis of age, sex, and time-to-death (TTD); in prior reports, the demographic factors accounted for age and sex only. The purpose of this memorandum is to help explain how this was done and the impact it has on the Medicare projections.

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