Push To Raise Medicare Eligibility To 67 A Bad Idea

It also would force people to rely on more expensive care in emergency rooms and more frequent hospital admissions -- just the type of higher healthcare expense we need to avoid if the country wants to rein in overall healthcare spending.

So the real challenges are demographics and rising health-care utilization, not Medicare. The aging boomer generation will swell Medicare enrollment from 57 million last year to nearly 90 million by 2040, according to the program’s trustees. Spending will rise along with that, to 5.6 percent of gross domestic product, up from 3.6 percent in 2015.

But Medicare spending on health care is not out of control. Per-enrollee outlays rose at an average annual rate of 5.5 percent, somewhat slower than the 6.3 percent average annual growth rate in private insurance spending per enrollee between 1989 and 2014. In addition, cost containment measures within the ACA improved the outlook substantially, pushing the insolvency date out by 11 years.

Let us deal with that through sensible Medicare reforms -- gradual increases in the payroll taxes and further efforts to control health-care costs.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters, which provided this article.