Romney/Ryan will raise Medicare eligibility age for current seniors

Are you over 55 and comforted by the fact that at least Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan won't screw you out of your Medicare? Don't be. They're going to make you wait to become eligible for the benefits they are supposedly saving.

WALLACE: But the problem is, those reforms don’t kick in until 2023. It doesn’t affect any seniors or anybody close to being a senior. But that doesn’t solve the Medicare part A problem which kicks in in 2016. What are you going to do to keep solvent between 2016, after you have repealed Obamacare, and 2023?

GILLESPIE: Governor Romney supports increasing over time bringing Medicare eligibility in line with the Social Security retirement age … The Congressional Budget Office says assumptions about the Medicare trust fund being solvent through 2024 under the Obamacare proposal is unrealistic.

So, in order to keep Medicare from going insolvent in 2016, the eligibility age would have to be raised in the next four years and for all those people who will reach 65 by then. And it's still a bad idea.

The most important chart in the Medicare eligibility age debate.

The $5.7 billion in savings would be obliterated by the $11.4 billion in additional health care costs not having older Americans covered would create. That includes increased costs to Medicare when those people—who would be sicker because they've deferred care—finally get there.

Proving yet again two things: Romney and Ryan are liars when they say the pain won't hit anyone older than 55; and their very serious policy solutions are not serious and not solutions, just snake oil.