President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in the Senate are mulling over which of their priorities they will try to get through Congress by using a parliamentary procedure that requires only a simple majority to pass.
One terribly bad idea on the list would lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60 — a step that would move the country a little closer to creating government-run health insurance programs for everyone.
Medicare is certainly a popular program. Many seniors continue to work until reaching Medicare eligibility age simply because they need their employer-provided insurance or the income to pay for health coverage if their employer doesn’t provide it.
But Medicare is also in terrible financial condition, thanks to both America’s aging population and a major expansion in benefits 15 years ago that the program couldn’t afford. Just like the Bush administration erred in 2006 when it pushed for Medicare to include prescription drug coverage, Biden is poised to repeat the mistake with his advocacy for letting people enroll five years sooner.
There are two facts that the proposed expansion ignores.
First, people are generally living longer, which is why the age of eligibility for full Social Security benefits has been creeping upward. The longer people live, the longer they should expect to work, and the longer they should be able to foot most of the cost of their medical coverage.
The other is that Medicare can’t afford the benefits it now provides, much less add to it. One of its trust funds, out of which hospitals and nursing homes are paid, is projected to be insolvent in just three years. That means, with no changes, there won’t be enough money in the fund to pay providers their current reimbursement rate, which many of these same providers already claim does not fully cover their costs.
The American people across the political spectrum don’t want to hear this. A poll taken two years ago by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that almost 85% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans were in favor of allowing those as young as 50 to buy into Medicare. We know how that would turn out. Government policymakers would never set the premiums high enough to cover the additional expense.
The economics on this are simple. Medicare will be lucky to survive meeting its obligations to the 60 million or so it now serves. It would be foolhardy to add up to 23 million more beneficiaries on top of that.
