Medicare eligibility to age 67; yet another proposal – Obama would consider

Raising Medicare eligibility to age 67 keeps popping up. This time the Washington-based Healthcare Leadership Council included the recommendation with others such as making people earning more than $150,000 pay for the full cost of the program’s premiums. Lets hope they are only talking Part B and D or retirement will be a dream for these folks too. The group is made up of CEOs of healthcare companies. By the way, paying that full premium means nearly $12,000 a year for that couple earning $150,000.

I guess some people think we are solving a problem here, but let’s think about what it means. That extra two years without Medicare means most of these people will be enrolled through the new health insurance exchanges where they will be heavily subsidized by the government. That means we are putting money in one pocket and taking it from another. Now consider that the Medicare expense is incurred when claims are incurred, but with the exchange the expense is guaranteed to be incurred because it subsidizes premiums regardless if the beneficiary incurs claim costs. In other words, who knows what this will cost.

Some studies have shown that the very existence of the exchanges will cause employers to drop coverage for workers. As this is already happening for early retirees the number of such people will grow if Medicare is delayed. More unplanned government costs?

So by shifting people from Medicare to who knows where, are we solving any problem? Their health care expenses will still exist and by shifting from Medicare to the private sector we are losing the value of the tight fee limits imposed by Medicare. Ya pays yur money and takes yur choice.

In later news it appears Obama does not want to consider Medicare at age 67, but rather changes to Medigap coverage. Stand by and hold on to your seat.