Emphasis mine
The health industry case for raising Medicare’s eligibility age
Posted by Sarah Kliff
The Obama administration suggested the new age limit during deficit negotiations as a way to cut federal costs. Yet there’s been little public discussion, from the industry perspective, of what it would mean to move about 5 million seniors out of Medicare and into private programs or for them to have no coverage at all.
I put that question to health industry sources, and several had this to say:
Key health care players tentatively lean toward raising Medicare eligibility age, especially when it’s compared to other entitlement cuts that the deficit-reduction supercommittee could make. And, for some of those in the health care industry,
the change could be profitable.The Health Leadership Council, a consortium of 47 health industry leaders including Aetna, Pfizer and the Cleveland Clinic, endorsed today to raise Medicare’s eligibility age from 65 to 67, phasing in the change by two months annually. Raising Medicare's eligibility age is one proposal in a four-part package of Medicare reforms up for vote, including creating a new exchange-like marketplace and increasing the cost-sharing for seniors who earn more than $150,000. You can read the full proposal
here.
The pushback on the policy proposal, rather, is likely to come from other stakeholders. States, employers and seniors would all suffer if the Medicare eligibility rules were changed.
It would shift about $11.4 billion in new costs to those parties while saving the federal government only $5.7 billion, according to the Center on Budget Priorities and Policy.“This policy does nothing to control costs,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, wrote in a memo obtained by the New York Times.
“It simply shifts substantial costs from Medicare to other parts of government and to private and public employers.”http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-health-industry-case-for-raising-medicares-eligibility-age/2011/09/14/gIQAJJ8sRK_blog.html