Medicare
Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget wants to increase Medicare coverage, universally. Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposed lowering the age requirement for Medicare to give people age 60 and older the option to enroll in Medicare programs with the same premiums and benefits as current beneficiaries. Currently the rule is a person has to be eligible for Social Security benefits before they are eligible for Medicare.
The Washington Examiner in May of 2022 reports that a study was conducted by the Congressional Budget Office examining the effects of a policy that would lower the age eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 60. If Sanders and Biden’s plans to drop the age for Medicare Part A eligibility to age 60 from 65 moves forward to fruition, these changes add $146 billion in cost to the Part A trust fund between 2026 and 2031. By 2030 it is estimated that the Medicare Hospital Insurance fund will be $335 billion in the red.
It assumed that the Hospital Insurance Trust fund that provides money for Medicare Part A is projected to become insolvent due to rising health costs…the program has been financed through payroll taxes and taxes on Social Security benefits.
Thus options include cutting benefits, with consumer paying larger portion for medical services; premium increases; increased taxes, increased sources for contributions (employers).
Medicaid – Food as Medicine
Biden administration has started approving state requests to use Medicaid to pay for groceries and nutritional counseling. This is an unnecessary expansion, and very expensive expansion to Medicaid. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs, or SNAP, was developed to help people on lower incomes pay for food. SNAP is part of the Agriculture Budget determined by Congress. However, Arkansas was allocated up to $85 million in federal and state funds to use towards health related social services, including nutritional counseling and healthy meal preparation counseling. Similar funding has been made available to Oregon and Massachusetts. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted that the agency funds “produce prescriptions”, to help purchase fruits and vegetables.
Medicaid is a handful of states is now paying for air conditioners and up to six months of rent. Medicaid is also paying for devices that boost air quality.
It’s no wonder our national budget has such a huge deficit; WSJ Feb 13, 2023