“I think the candidates want to stay away from it, keep it quiet until after the primaries,’’ said Ralph Lawson, a 71-year-old retired financial planner from Dracut, Mass., in between dancing to live jazz. “They don’t want to upset seniors, the majority of the voters here.’’
Sarasota County, where Newt Gingrich drew more than 4,000 in a campaign appearance last week and Rick Santorum has set up his Florida headquarters, has one of the highest proportions of seniors in the country, with nearly a third of the population aged 65 or older, according to 2010 Census figures.
The GOP candidates might be surprised that many seniors do not reject out of hand two major proposals made earlier in the campaign: raising the age of eligibility for Medicare - the health insurance plan for the elderly - and its full or partial privatization. This might reflect the fact that most would be grandfathered into the existing program. Some say privatizing Medicare makes sense because something drastic has to be done to slice the nation’s debt.
This view echoes the finding of a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last spring reporting that 61 percent of Republicans 65 or older favored gradually raising the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67 for future retirees.
It’s been nearly three months since Mitt Romney announced his plan to rein in skyrocketing costs by increasing the eligibility age and allowing seniors to choose between traditional Medicare or federal vouchers to buy private insurance. His plan was light on politically sensitive details, such as how much more seniors would be expected to pay, and he has not elaborated.
