Medicare officials have announced that 2009 would be the sixth year not to register an increase in the premiums, since the health insurance program began in 1965. Medicare, which is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, currently provides health insurance to both the elderly and the disabled.

Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services informed that, next year, the monthly premiums for those meeting the service’s criteria would amount to $96.40. This is actually this year’s standard Part B premium, whose coverage includes, among other medical treatments, physician and nursing services, x-rays, laboratory and diagnostic tests, influenza and pneumonia vaccinations, blood transfusions and renal dialysis.

The Medicare program has two parts: Part A-Hospital Insurance-which covers the cost of a hospital stay that spreads over a maximum period of 100 days per ailment and Part B-Medical Insurance, which pays for outpatient care. As of 1997, the original Medicare plan was added a Part C that offers beneficiaries the option to receive the program’s services through private health insurance plans, while back in 2006, Medicare's Part D-Prescription Drug Plans-came into effect.

During recent years, Medicare funding has registered an increase, in 2005 the premiums going up by 17%.

Nevertheless, in 2009, they are to remain steady, mostly due to the reimbursing of $9.3 billion to the Part B fund, after Medicare officials discovered that money that should have been taken out of the Part A fund had been used to cover hospice payments.

Medicare's chief actuary Richard Foster stated that he expected 2010 premium rates to rise. Moreover, the same year, a 20% reduction in physician payments for the program’s Part B services is to be created via a formula the Congress uses to anually adjust these payments.