“Providers have been giving and giving and giving, and will give more. But the beneficiaries also have to be touched even though politicians feel like that’s a third rail,’’ said Lynn Nicholas, president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association. “We have to look at health care entitlements and not just payments. It’s pretty much a no brainer to raise the age of eligibility for future enrollees.’’
In addition to the eligibility age increase, which is projected to save the federal government $124.8 billion over 10 years, Nicholas said the state association would like Congress to consider other cost-sharing options within Medicare. Raising the elderly’s Medicare premiums for doctors’ visits from 25 percent to 35 percent, for example, would result in a savings of $241.2 billion over a decade, she said.
One proposal Nicholas said the hospital association endorses would gradually increase the age of eligibility by two months every year starting with people born in 1949, until it reaches 67.
The nation’s hospitals face a potential 2 percent cut as part of a larger automatic Medicare reduction if the bipartisan supercommittee does not come up with enough savings over the next two months. Given that, it comes as little surprise that hospital executives would be trying to protect their bottom lines, health care analysts say.
But some analysts and advocates expressed concern that the hospitals are watching their own backs at the expense of seniors, especially given pending court challenges to the federal health care overhaul signed by Obama last year, which expanded health insurance for millions of Americans. If the health care law is repealed and the eligibility age raised, hundreds of thousands of seniors could end up uninsured, said Paul Van de Water, a fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, D.C., that analyzes how policies impact low-income Americans.
