Shhhhh Medicare expansion is Hugely Consequential

Many on the left are disappointed in Medicare expansion for 60-65. Choosing 60 years old is an arbitrary number. .  The fact that it is an expansion and not a buy-in is hugely consequential, for the first time in the history of Medicare, the program is being expanded to include other age groups.

The dirty secret of a 55 -65 Medicare buy-in is that Medicare insurance would have been expensive for most and therefore not affordable to most 55- 65 years old.  Dropping the age is a miracle for many in the 60 -65 year age group.

In addition, there are huge unintended consequences from this Medicare expansion — adding younger healthier people into Medicare will make the per-person cost of Medicare go down. Moving older workers into Medicare will lower the cost of Employer offered health insurance and ACA Marketplace insurance.

In addition, the employer’s cost of having older workers will suddenly go down a lot which might slow down the ageism that affects many industries

But make no mistake, this is a BFD.

UPDATE — wrote  this diary very quickly sorry for the errors — now corrected