But the truly terrible idea here is raising the Medicare eligibility age. It’s something Obama reportedly offered in 2011 during the debt ceiling negotiations, and it was every bit a bad idea then as it is now. Yale political science professor Jacob Hacker has called it “the single worst idea for Medicare reform.”
The key facts to understand about raising the Medicare eligibility age: not only does it shift substantial costs onto seniors, it also doesn’t save the federal government any notable amount of money. It’s a lose-lose proposition. By kicking seniors aged 65 and 66 off of Medicare, the government would at first seem to save $5.7 billion. Of course, this is nothing more than cost-shifting: those seniors would then have to pay $3.7 billion out of their pockets in 2014, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And some would likely be unable to find private insurance at that age if they’ve already retired. For those that are still employed, their employers are projected to spend an additional $4.5 billion to insure those who would otherwise be on Medicare. So you’ve screwed over seniors and their employers, but at least the federal government saved some money, right? Not so fast. Because 65- and 66-year-olds are among the healthiest of all Medicare beneficiaries, what you’ve done is removed pay-ins from the people least likely to need expensive care. The risk-pool math looks worse, and the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that raising the Medicare eligibility age “would have little effect on the trajectory of Medicare’s long-term spending.”