AGE EXPECTANCY AND ELIGIBILITY

According to the best estimates, about 61 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare, the government health provider for (mostly) older Americans. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says the country spent nearly $800 billion on Medicare in 2019.

As for Medicaid, the program for low-income Americans, estimates put the figure at about 77 million. And that line item cost more than $613 billion last year.

That’s 138 million Americans in those two programs. Accounting for nearly 42 percent of the nation’s population. And a trillion and a half dollars a year.

So why not expand it?

In the march for a complete government takeover of health care, proponents of Medicare-for-all might have come to the conclusion that they need only take one step at a time. Incremental is the name of the game. Until the game is won:

Word around the campfire is that Democrats in Congress are pushing to lower the age of Medicare eligibility. The next round of spending is being negotiated now, but according to The Wall Street Journal, legislation to lower the Medicare age from 65 to 60 is already being discussed. As are changes in the rules to let the feds negotiate prices for drugs in the program. (And you know how government always makes things cheaper.)

“We should lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 down to 60,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “There are many millions of seniors who would be very, very grateful if we did that right now.”

The only thing some would find surprising in that statement might be the fact that Bernie Sanders is the Senate Budget Committee chairman.

The honorable lawmaker from Vermont also said he hopes to expand Medicare to include dental care, hearing aids and glasses.

The killjoys in the Republican Party tell the media that Medicare already faces insolvency in the next five years. And the nation is closing in on $30 trillion in debt. And hospital groups told The Journal that adding millions of Americans to the Medicare rolls would mean a lowered compensation rate for them, just as they are trying to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the strategies for saving Medicare has been to suggest raising the eligibility age. Those who’ve been pushing for entitlement reform (remember that?) over the years say gradually raising the age for Medicare would put it on the road to solvency, along with other reforms. A couple of years ago, Republicans in Congress tried to raise it to 67 years; the idea fizzled out.

But Bernie Sanders & Co. would add another 23 million Americans to the Medicare program in one swipe of the debit card by lowering the eligibility age by five whole years — increasing the cost of an already creaking program by nearly 38%.

After all, it’s only government money.

We might have mentioned this in an editorial about five times already this year, but it’s worth repeating: If a nation can spend like this, without consequences, it will mark the first time in world history.