House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi railed against Republicans’ proposal to raise the Medicare eligibility age as part of a debt deal to avert he fiscal cliff in a USA Today op-ed published Tuesday.
[I]n the talks to avert the fiscal cliff, the idea of raising the Medicare age is central to the Republican proposal. There’s just one critical problem: It doesn’t work. It doesn’t have public support. It’s unfair. And it doesn’t lower health expenditures…
On paper, it appears to save money for the federal government. In practice, it simply shifts the cost of health care to newly uninsured 65- and 66-year-olds, forcing them to pay more for their care out of their own pockets. It makes older Medicare beneficiaries pay higher premiums.
