Sorry deficit fanatics, this one has nothing to do with the cost of the stimulus or the deficits run up during the Obama years. We're talking real money here. We're talking about plans to raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67.
To deficit hawks everywhere, this is a great way to save the government money. Life expectancy at age 65 is roughly 20 years. Therefore, raising the age of eligibility for Medicare by two years would shave roughly 10 percent off the program's budget. (The actual saving would be somewhat less since it is cheaper to treat people when they are 65 and 66 than in their 80s or 90s.) For a program that is projected to cost more than $1 trillion a year (at 5 percent of GDP) in a decade and even more in following decades, this would amount to real savings.
But the cost of this savings is a much higher health care bill for beneficiaries. As it is now, millions of people in their 60s struggle to hang onto jobs that provide health care insurance or do without, hoping that they can make it until 65 without a major medical problem. This proposal pushes the magic age out two more years.
And there should be no mistake; the cost of insurance for someone in their mid-sixties is a real burden. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the cost (in 2011 dollars) of ensuring someone in the private sector at age 65 will be $15,500 a year in 2022.
1 comment:
Id wager anyone that thinks that is flattering themselves at this point that their ill educated lazy kids will even be in a tax bracket to be taken advantage of to such a degree
they will be milking it too
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