For the second consecutive year, the trustees that oversee Medicare, the government healthcare program for the elderly, have issued a “funding warning." The warning is triggered when for two consecutive years, projections show that within seven years dedicated revenues will meet less than 45 percent of expenses. This year Medicare's Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures than it receives in taxes and other dedicated revenues. The difference will be made up from general revenues which pay for interest credits to the trust fund. Growing annual deficits are projected to exhaust the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund reserves in 2019, the report said. The trustees also warned that the Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund, which pays for physician services and the prescription drug benefit, will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that grow substantially faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time. “We are increasingly concerned about inaction on the financial challenges facing the Social Security and Medicare programs,” the trustees said in their report. “The longer action is delayed, the greater will be the required adjustments, the larger the burden on future generations, and the more severe the detrimental economic impact on our nation.”