Medicare at 50 Act reintroduced

[Ca Bob]

C(-)ris wrote:
Not sure why we would need to extended it beyond retirement age. You should be working till you are 65 unless you have a disability or other qualifying event in which case you would be eligible for that reason.

We don't need to give people who decide they want to retire early Medicare. They made the choice and funding their own healthcare should have been part of their calculations to decide if they could retire early.

I presume the idea is to allow people under the age of 65 to buy in to Medicare at some price point. In other words, a "public option" for anybody who manages to make it to 50, and which would roll over into regular Medicare at age 65. I see this as a way to create some real competition in the world of providing care and pharmaceuticals.

And it ought to be obvious that the long range goal would be to extend the public/Medicare option to lower ages over the years or decades, as the idea that there is a general right to buy health insurance becomes more universal.

One study of hospital bills suggested that American hospitals bill much higher than in other places simply because they can. This would be the next step towards doing something about that. There is so much that needs to be done to our non-system. If we can't do it in one magical swoop of the wand, then we should at least make incremental changes as they become possible.