Medicare Pros And Cons

On July 30th 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law Medicare and Medicaid programs for the United States of America. This gave elderly and lower income Americans the right to obtain insurance coverage. Medicare is an insurance program for people aged 65 years or older, people under the age of 65 who suffer from certain disabilities or people of all ages that suffer from End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). Medicare is composed of 3 different programs which consist of Part A-hospital insurance, Part B-medical insurance and Part D-prescription drug coverage. In 2030, about 20% of the American population will be an adult over the age of 65 years and eligible for Medicare. In today’s society, healthcare costs are rising daily and the federal

Our Medicare budget is projected to be insufficient by 2030. In order to make sure Medicare is able to thrive, the United States government has to increase the age of eligibility to 67 years old. Many options for changing our Medicare program have been proposed; however, I agree with gradually increasing the age of Medicare from 65 to 67 over a period of several years. “The option that the CBO (congressional budget office) analyzed would raise the age of eligibility for Medicare by two months every year, beginning with people who were born in 1951 (who will turn 65 in 2016), until the eligibility age reached 67 for people born in 1962 (who will turn 67 in 2029). Thereafter, the eligibility age would remain at 67.” (Elmendorf, 2013) By only increasing the eligibility age by 2 years we would see a 19 billion dollar savings in our government’s spending. Many will argue that this new age will increase the amount of uninsured Americans in our population; however, the CBO stated “95% of those who would otherwise have been covered by Medicare will instead obtain coverage from employers, the ACA's Medicaid expansion or the health-insurance exchanges scheduled to be up and running in 2014.” (Elmendorf,