Ed Gillespie:Says GOP Would Extend Medicare’s Solvency By Raising The Eligibility Age

[maddezmom]

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney pledged to restore Obamacare’s savings in the Medicare program — a move that would move up the insolvency date of the program’s trust fund from 2024 to 2016.

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Romney senior adviser Ed Gillespie how the campaign would extend the life of the program if the Romney-Ryan reforms won’t kick in until 2023, long after Medicare reached insolvency. Gillespie replied by insisting that a Romney administration would raise the age eligibility to 67:

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Numerous studies have shown that booting 65- and 66-year-olds from Medicare would in fact have only modest savings, while raising health care costs across the board for seniors. Though Medicare spending itself would be reduced by 5 percent, the seniors taken out of the system would then have to turn to employers, other government programs and the states, increasing costs. As a result many of the people who would otherwise have enrolled in Medicare would face higher premiums for health insurance, higher out-of-pocket costs for health care, or both.
The Center On Budget and Policy Priorities estimates costs could “total $11.4 billion — twice the net savings to the federal government” in 2014 alone. Medicare’s market power would inevitably suffer as well:

more:http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/08/19/711011/romney-adviser-says-gop-would-extend-medicares-solvency-by-raising-the-eligibility-age/

[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. Think Of The Savings If You Raise It To Eighty

[MADem]

3. Ninety! Hell, why not? Work, geezers, WORK!!!!!

Lazy old people!! How dare they expect to be permitted to sit down in their dotage!

Gotta roll this out for people who don't do nuance:

[liberal N proud]

2. Raise the eligibility age so high, that only the dead are eligible.

Then they can say they saved it.

[SDjack]

4. GOP just throws out crap, hoping something will get traction. Raising the

eligibility age wont. Maybe raising taxes on the rich would work.

[Progressive dog]

5. What a scumbag

If the rethugs could only keep the ones kicked off medicare from having any health care, maybe enough would die to make the savings greater.