Tough Medicine - And Necessary
The Senate’s Medicare solution makes perfect sense: Stick those budget cuts to the generation everyone loves to hate.
Last week the Senate voted to raise the minimum age for Medicare from 65 to 67. The beauty of this idea is that it won’t affect anyone over age 59, and will gradually phase in as baby boomers age.
Who can complain about a deal like that?
Boomers, those latte-guzzling, BMW-driving narcissists, are generally held in low regard by everyone else. Seniors may have raised them, but they’ve been carping about their kids’ spending habits for years. They share with Gen-Xers a common enemy.
Jabbing boomers right in their sleek eel-skin wallets could become a cause the most ardent seniors’ advocate could embrace.
Politicians in that cruise ship known as Congress have seen Medicare looming in the freezing Arctic for years. Over the next decade, it’s expected to cost the federal government $1.6 trillion. But, terrified by visions of furious gray-haired lobbyists puncturing politicians’ lifeboats with sharp sticks and throwing them overboard while whistling refrains of “Nearer My God To Thee,” members of Congress have been too paralyzed to act.
Shivering at that prospect, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. Richard Gephardt composed a dithering op-ed column which appeared in the Washington Post last week. About raising the age from 65 to 67, they wrote, “This delay could throw millions of elderly Americans into the ranks of the uninsured at a particularly vulnerable time in their lives.”
Wait a minute. Back up to that ‘E’-word. Perhaps these politicians haven’t noticed, but 60-year-olds long ago stopped being elderly. They work out and jog, they pop vitamins, Prozac and Premarin. They invest heavily both in hair dyes and alpha hydroxy acids.
Ted Kennedy himself turned 65 this year. Primarily known as a paunchy partier, he’s hardly decrepit.
Now, the group likely to be angriest about Medicare reforms are the senator’s cronies, wealthy retirees. Comprising only 4 percent of the Medicare population, individuals with incomes over $50,000 or couples making more than $75,000 would see their $100 deductibles increase under the Senate plan. They would pay the first $540 of their annual doctor bills, and Medicare would pay 80 percent after that.
Those who make over $100,000 (or $125,000 for a couple) would pay an annual $2,160 deductible. No doubt they’ll complain.
But when you’re golfing regularly at “the club” and hiring an interior designer to redecorate your Palm Springs condo, you really don’t need the government to pay for every penny of your medical care. Not when you consider that a kid earning $25,000 who can’t afford health insurance winds up subsidizing health care for those who make $1 million.
Medicare, this country’s single fastest-growing program, must make dramatic fiscal changes. By 2030, an estimated 70 million Americans are expected to enroll in Medicare, the vast majority of them baby boomers.
It’s time for a little congressional courage.
And trust us on this one. If this proposal forces boomers to cut back a few tall skinny lattes or dine less often on free-range cilantro-kumquat baby tortoise, seniors all over this country will stand up and cheer.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely/For the editorial board