Alaska Health Policy Review

By Paul N. Van de Water:

Raising Medicare’s eligibility age from 65 to 67, which the new Joint Select Committee will likely consider this fall as a deficit-reduction measure, would not only fail to constrain health care costs across the economy; it would increase them.

While this proposal would save the federal government money, it would do so by shifting costs to most of the 65- and 66-year-olds who would lose Medicare coverage, to employers that provide health coverage for their retirees, to Medicare beneficiaries, to younger people who buy insurance through the new health insurance exchanges, and to states.

The principal study of the effects of raising the Medicare eligibility age, by 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.

[Excerpted from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Read the full report here.]

Filed under: Of interest