About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

Raising the Age of Eligibility for Medicare to 67: An Updated Estimate of the Budgetary Effects 1 (October 2013)

handle is hein.congrec/cbo11352 and id is 1 raw text is: W-V OCTOBER 2013 Raising the Age of Eligibility for Medicare to 67: An Updated Estimate of the Budgetary Effects Medicare, one of the federal government's largest programs, provides health care benefits primarily to elderly people. The usual age of eligibility for those benefits is 65, although certain people qualify for the program earlier. (Medicare is available to people under age 65 who have been eligible for Social Security disability benefits for at least 24 months or who have end-stage renal disease.) Outlays for Medicare are projected to increase rapidly in coming decades because of the retirement of the baby-boom generation and because growth in per capita spending for health care is expected to continue to exceed growth in per capita gross domestic product over the long term. Moreover, increases in life expectancy mean that the average length of time that people are covered by Medicare has risen significantly since the program began in 1965. That trend, which increases the program's costs, will almost certainly continue. In the course of preparing its forthcoming report on options for reducing the budget deficit, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) updated its analysis of an option to raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67. The agency's new estimate of the net budgetary savings from that option is much lower than its earlier estimates for proposals to raise Medicare's eligibility age.1 This report describes CBO's new estimate and the reasons for the change. What Policy Option Did CBO Analyze? The option that CBO analyzed would raise the age of eligibility for Medicare by two months every year, beginning with people who were born in 1951 (who will turn 65 in 2016), until the eligibility age reached 67 for people born in 1962 (who will turn 67 in 2029). Thereafter, the eligibility age would remain at 67. Those changes are similar to the ongoing increases in Social Security's full retirement age (FRA)-the age at which workers become eligible for full retirement benefits-except that scheduled increases in the FRA include a 12-year period during which the FRA remains at 66. (Unlike Medicare, which has a single eligibility age, Social Security allows workers to receive reduced retirement benefits as early as age 62, and the majority of eligible people choose to claim Social Security benefits before reaching the FRA.) Under this 1.For previous estimates, see Congressional Budget Office, Raising the Ages of Eligibility for Medicare and Social Security (January 2012), www~wcbogovipublicaion/42683, and Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options (March 2011), p. 45, wwvwcogov /publicaion22043.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most