Should Congress raise the eligibility age for Medicare?

Americans are living and working longer. Why not raise the Medicare eligibility age?

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last updated 8 January 2015

As America races toward the fiscal cliff, much of the debate has centered on raising tax rates on households earning more than $250,000 a year. Republicans remain publicly opposed to the idea, but the smart money is that they've lost that argument and know it. President Obama won re-election with a promise to raise taxes on the wealthy; Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has little leverage to make Obama back down; and even a majority of Republicans — 61 percent — supports the idea.

Less discussed is what entitlement cuts the two sides can agree on. One money-saving proposal is to raise the eligibility age for Medicare. As Janet Hook and Carol E. Lee note at The Wall Street Journal, "The prospect of cuts to Medicare and other entitlement programs is making many Democrats anxious. Of particular concern is Republicans' call for increasing the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, an idea that cold split Democrats." According to the Congressional Budget Office, raising the eligibility age gradually between 2012 and 2021 would save $113 billion.

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And doing this could hurt lots and lots of people. As I noted yesterday, a new report finds that raising the age could leave hundreds of thousands of seniors (many of them poor) uninsured, because there’s no telling for sure whether Obamacare or Medicaid will be an effective safety net for those booted from Medicare. What’s more, the report finds that it could undermine ObamaCare’s goals of controlling health care costs.

Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.

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