The Kaiser Family Foundation, estimates that its increased state and private-sector costs would be twice as large as the net federal savings. If the proposal were fully in effect in 2014, Kaiser estimates, it would generate $5.7 billion in net federal savings but $11.4 billion in higher health care costs to individuals, employers, and states.
Here's what happens if you raise the eligibility age:
* 65- and 66-year-olds would face higher out-of-pocket health care costs, on average. Two-thirds of this group — 3.3 million people — would face an average of $2,200 more each year in
premiums and cost-sharing charges.
- State Medicaid costs would rise as some of those who lost Medicare coverage (those with the
lowest incomes) would obtain coverage through Medicaid instead.
- Employer costs would rise as more 65- and 66-year-olds whose employers offered coverage to
their retirees received primary coverage through their employer rather than Medicare.
- All Medicare beneficiaries would pay higher premiums because the removal of 65- and 66-yearolds, who are typically healthier than the overall Medicare beneficiary population, would leave the Medicare beneficiary population costlier, on average, to cover.
- People under age 65 who buy coverage through the new health insurance exchanges would face
higher premiums to help cover the cost of insuring the many 65- and 66-year-olds who would
enter the exchanges; the 65- and 66-year-olds would be less healthy, and more costly to cover,
on average, than other people who bought coverage through the exchanges
As to the effect of Obama's health care law:
Under the health reform law (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA), seniors no longer eligible for Medicare could obtain coverage through Medicaid or the exchanges. But raising the age of eligibility for Medicare would substantially boost out-of-pocket costs for 65- and 66-year-olds, which many of them with modest incomes could have difficulty affording, prompting some to become uninsured and others to forgo needed care. It also would raise health care costs overall.
Policymakers could take some steps, outlined below, to limit — but not eliminate — these harmful impacts. Moreover, if Congress repealed health reform, as the House has voted to do, large numbers of 65- and 66-yearolds who lost Medicare coverage would likely wind up uninsured.
The option that the Congressional Budget Office has considered:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has examined an option that would raise Medicare’s eligibility age by two months every year starting with people born in 1949 (who will turn 65 in 2014) until it reaches 67 for people born in 1960 (who will turn 67 in 2027), remaining at 67 thereafter.1
Under this option, CBO assumes that Congress would make 65- and 66-year-olds with incomes below 138 percent of the poverty level eligible for Medicaid, to match the new Medicaid income limit for other adults that the Affordable Care Act establishes starting in 2014.
The Kaiser report is based on full implementation in 2114 rather than the CBO's gradual two month implementation.
Kaiser says:
Seven million people age 65 or 66 at some point in 2014 would be affected by the policy change for one or more months. This number is equivalent to five million people affected for a full 12 months.
Obama is preparing to toss 7 million people under the bus. Dumb, just dumb.
