Largely because it means the folks who most need Medicare at 65 won't have it. Which means they will let their medical conditions get worse (because they can't afford insurance otherwise). Which means when they do hit Medicare (assuming they don't, y'know, die in the process), they will be more costly patients.
In other words, the savings from raising the Medicare eligibility age need to be balanced against the extra costs that more sickly patients hitting the system a few years later will incur. Leaving aside that whole "dying" thing.
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Why We Shouldn’t Raise the Medicare Eligibility Age – Doctors for America
A reoccurring idea among some politicians of late in the fiscal cliff negotiations is to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. The argument, at first glance, seems simple enough: Medicare …
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I would have thought it would make more sense to bring the eligibility age down so that people can continue to work and have a better quality of life later on (of course, this ignores the ageism that has been recurring in recent years).
The problem with letting politicians make these kinds of decisions is that they have a guaranteed safety cushion from the state regardless of what kind of mess they make of the country (I'm assuming the US is no different to any other country in this respect), as opposed to the people whose lives they are actually affecting.
Yes, I guarantee that raising the Medicare eligibility age will have no effect on the personal budgets or health care received by any member of Congress.
I wish our representatives were more representative of the majority of Americans.
:/