MEDICARE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN CLOSER.(PERSPECTIVE)

Byline: STUART M. BUTLER

Here is the bad news: Medicare will go broke in 2001. Here is worse news: Keeping the program afloat four more years, until 2005, will cost the average household $14,000 in taxes.

These disturbing facts come to us courtesy of the Medicare Board of Trustees, the bipartisan group of experts (including three Clinton administration cabinet secretaries) that keeps tabs on the health-care program for America's 37 million senior citizens.

According to the trustees, the most acute crisis facing Medicare is the looming bankruptcy of the hospital insurance trust fund, known as Part A. To ensure that Part A can continue paying seniors' hospital bills until 2005, the trustees …