Means Tests
Durbin said it would be “difficult” to change the calculation of Social Security cost-of-living increases, and raising the Medicare eligibility age could hurt impoverished seniors who retire early with health problems.
Medicare is already a means-tested program, with beneficiaries earning more than $85,000 a year paying more for some of its benefits.
“The question is what other means tests should apply,” Durbin said. “I think that is reasonable, and certainly consistent with the Democratic message that those who are better off in our country should be willing to pay a little more.”
Republicans have “got to come through with specifics on that,” he said.
Many of the options for curbing entitlements have met with fierce opposition from powerful groups including the AARP seniors’ lobby, which wrote to Congress and the president last month expressing its concerns about such proposals.
The group fanned out across Capitol Hill this week to lobby against two elements in Boehner’s plan: raising the Medicare eligibility age and using the chained CPI for Social Security. Medicare’s eligibility age, 65, hasn’t been increased since the program began in 1966.
Medicare Savings
The Medicare change could save the federal government more than $100 billion while increasing health-care costs to senior citizens, states and employers. People age 65 and older could pay an extra $2,000 for health insurance if they are excluded from Medicare, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
The chained CPI inflation method to determine annual cost- of-living adjustments for millions of Americans was a central feature of both the plan presented by the co-leaders of Obama’s 2010 debt commission and a blueprint by the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force.