How about single payer health care.

We have been close to lowering medicare to age 55 and should try that again.
Rates become much higher after 55. Job discrimination related to cost of health care is a problem. If we added everyone the system would be much stronger because of the health of younger people. That is the main reason other countries pay half the price for twice the quality.

How many jobs would be created if seniors had the opportunity to actually retire–or retire early–because escalating healthcare costs would no longer threaten them with foreclosure or bankruptcy.

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or, lower the age of medicare elegibility to 1 second old

In 2011, Medicare covered 48.7 million people. Total expenditures were $549.1 billion. Total income was $530.0 billion.

A $19 billion shortfall with the people currently covered. I don’t see how covering more people, even young ones would bring costs down?

would save roughly $15 billion a year

Your “savings” would come right out of insurance company pockets and lead to wholesale layoffs, reduced yacht sales, and a host of other terrible consequences. Never fly. It wouldn’t be a savings it would be a cost, to those affected. It’s the new economics. Applies to the Pentagon, too.

Really??? You don’t see that younger people entering the workforce, with livable wages would contribute to Medicare and Social Security; the retirees have been shown to spend most or all of their income which is stimulative to the economy. [Very few S/S retirees mail their meager checks to Cayman tax havens.] Without having to purchase healthcare insurance, they would have even more money to ‘spend’ instead of merely enriching insurance companies and their overpaid executives. Additionally, many seniors have endured a number of years at a job they do not like because of healthcare coverage. Freed of this burden, many invest their savings into entrepreneurial efforts–another economic stimulus. And finally, those seniors who do not have healthcare/cannot afford healthcare until age 65, could address health issues that accompany aging–perhaps before ill health forced by poverty/neglect demands LARGE Medicare expenditures.

We have been close to lowering medicare to age 55 and should try that again.

Indeed. Thank you no good, miserable, prick Joe Lieberman

Here’s my take: you spread the risk around to a larger wider pool of much healthier (i.e., younger) individuals. The percentage of claims made as a function of premiums paid is far lower than for the present medicare pool.

Aren’t Cigna and Aetna headquartered in Hartford?

I do believe they are!

Not to mention Joe Lieberman’s wife is in the health care industry if memory serves me correctly.
I want this SOB out of Congress ASAP.

I like the idea but how do they figure it will save money? Is it bc new entrants would be younger or will they charge them more?

Maybe I didn’t understand. I thought the proposal was to add people to Medicare, not to the work force.

My bad.

Medicare Part A is funded by payroll taxes, no premiums.

Parts B and D are 76% funded by transfers from the General Fund no premiums for that portion.

If you add 50 million more people that are totally healthy, I still don’t see how actual costs go down. By accounting you can claim you cut costs per person in half, but the 48.7 million olds still need their $550B in benefits.

New, younger entrants are healthier than the current enrollees and therefore costs go down, because the new entrants must pay monthly premiums but don’t use as many services. Why is this hard to understand?

Are people being deliberately obtuse?

After this successful “experiment” America can then lower the eligibility age by a decade every year; we’d have everyone eligible for Medicare within about five years.

Thanks Jon. Great idea.

Yes!

Improved Medicare for all Now! Dropping the age to 55 would be a great start.

Are you all talking about a new funding scheme?

Premiums are only about 10% of current Medicare funding. Most comes from payroll taxes which aren’t adequate to cover those currently in the plan.

I don’t mind adding more people (or everyone) to Medicare, but it can’t be done under the current rules and save money.

The Pentagon might also support lowering the age for Medicare.

The Pentagon could dump Tricare if military retirees (some as young as 38) could sign onto Medicare. Also have Medicare cover active-duty dependents instead of Tricare Prime. All those medical costs (and in-house bureaucracy costs) off the Pentagon’s books.

This provide a model for larger corporations to buy into Medicare. Corporate retirees would no longer have to worry about Romney buying their company, bankrupting it and stealing their health insurance.

sounds good, sign me up*

(*with obligatory asterisk that of course the most efficient way is to scrap Medicare, Medicaid, and TriCare and replace them with a unified single payer insurance system…just expanding Medicare down the age scale would create some significant logistical hurdles)

Since our hospital can’t even break even on our Medicare patients and the only way that Medicare seems to know to control costs is to continually reduce payments to providers, I don’t see how lowering the age actually helps the situation at all.

I definitely agree. I would even be willing to have my Medicare % hiked up another 1.5% if they started talking about expanding the coverage to the over 50 population. It would eliminate one of the problems some of the older workers have when they find themselves unemployed and having a difficult time finding re employment too.

I would have more sympathy for hospitals if they weren’t so willing to pay games with pricing to begin with.

As it is the hospital says it wants $2000 for something so they can get the insurance companies to pay $500.

Meanwhile its the rest of us that pay. I had a period of time where my insurance had declined a bill because we were undergoing a verification process. The cost of my ER bill without insurance was $6000. The cost after insurance picked it up was my $75 co pay and less than 1/10 of that. You can’t tell me that insurance companies actually even save hospitals that much money that their stuff should be “discounted” that much.

He’s leaving. :)

Because young people pay premiums for health care but do not get sick as expensively as old people.

But people don’t pay premiums for Medicare (for the most part).

If you want to lower the age to 55 I assume you’d want to give them full benefits at that age. That means FREE hospital care (Part A), and Doctor Costs and Lab Tests (Part B) for about $100/month (although this part is optional).

Expenses have exceeded income for Part A since 2008 and are not expected to cover costs in 12 years. Bringing in more people will not bring in a dime.

The $100/month listed above covers about 25% of Part B costs, the rest is transfered from income taxes. Young people might not require as much transfer as the olds, but I doubt they’d keep paying for something they didn’t use.

Teddy, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Opening Medicare up to younger people who would be paying premiums to Medicare while using fewer services would beneift Medicare’s bottom line. This is why private health insurance companies have offered low premiums to young people, and then jacked up the premiums to force them off the rolls once they’re over 50. That’s how the private insurance companies have gotten their profits. Why shouldn’t Medicare open itself to younger participants and their premiums and the healthy flow of additional income? This is so obvious to me that I also think lots of folks are being deliberately obtuse. And rolling the Medicare eligibility age down one step at a time, starting with 55, is a great way to do this.

Obviously someones being obtuse.

The numbers were crunched when they almost took the age down to 55. There would be a charge for medicare just as there is for private health insurance only the charge would be much less because medicare is more efficient to run. Seniors do pay some money for medicare plus co-pays, but it is much less than private health insurance where seniors are not wanted due to expense. Even young people need some coverage. Given the choice of an excellent program that is affordable or private insurance that is full of holes and not affordable, they will opt for medicare.