'If I'd Had To Wait Until 67 For Medicare, I'd Be Dead'

By Russ Mitchell
Kaiser Health News
Originally published December 18, 2012

Sam Lewis turned 65 in the nick of time. For a year, he'd been broke. His Brentwood, Calif., general contracting business had gone bust. He couldn't make payments on his home, and lost it. He couldn't make payments on his health insurance, so he let it lapse.

The day after his birthday in October, when he qualified for Medicare, Lewis got a checkup. Days later, he went under the knife: open-heart surgery, a triple-bypass, three arteries blocked with plaque, one of them, 99 percent. "If I'd had to wait until 67 for Medicare," Lewis said, "I'd be dead."

A proposal to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 to ratchet down spending is one of the more explosive ideas in the fiscal talks between House Speaker John Boehner and the White House. The negotiations are aimed at a deficit deal to avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts slated to take effect Jan. 1.  Liberal Democrats say they loathe the Medicare proposal, but the White House has not taken a public position on it.

President Barack Obama was open to a similar proposal last year during his failed effort to reach a "grand bargain" with Republicans.  And many expect it to pop up again in next year’s discussions about curbing entitlement costs if it is not included in this year’s deal.

The entire article is here.