{"id":186744,"date":"2013-10-27T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T00:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/27\/a-key-part-of-the-grand-bargain-does-not-wporkl\/"},"modified":"2013-10-27T19:51:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T00:51:00","slug":"a-key-part-of-the-grand-bargain-does-not-wporkl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/27\/a-key-part-of-the-grand-bargain-does-not-wporkl\/","title":{"rendered":"A Key Part of the “Grand Bargain” Does not Wporkl"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that upping the medicare eligibility age does not save a meaningful amount of money<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 saves far less than previously projected, a revelation that makes the policy far less attractive in upcoming deficit reduction negotiations in Congress.<\/p>\n

The long-debated policy now cuts the deficit by just $19 billion over a decade, according to a report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Last year, the same policy — of gradually lifting the eligibility age by two months every year until it reached 67 — was found by the CBO to save $113 billion over the same time period.<\/p>\n

The idea has been floated since 2011, when President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner nearly agreed to a broad debt deal that adopted it. But while conservatives still support the policy, along with deeper long-term cuts to retirement benefit programs, the White House and top Democrats have since cooled to it.<\/p>\n

“This would have been a tough sell when it raised $100 billion. It’s hard to imagine making such a drastic change now that we know it saves far less,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide, in response to the CBO report.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, this is not really<\/b> about is an attempt to incrementally destroy the program.<\/p>\n

As the age goes up, the people get progressively sicker, and the per capita cost goes up, and the population served shrinks, and the program enters a political and fiscal death spiral.<\/p>\n

This is the real goal of people who really want this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that upping the medicare eligibility age does not save a meaningful amount of money: Raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 saves far less than previously projected, a revelation that makes the policy far less attractive in upcoming deficit reduction negotiations in Congress. The long-debated policy now cuts the deficit by just …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[978,1086],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-social-safety-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}