… On the other hand, Brooks’ fellow columnist at The New York Times, Paul Krugman, takes the typical liberal approach when anyone proposes Medicare reforms.
Krugman believes we should expand Medicare, even at a time when it’s on a financial path that is clearly unsustainable. Of course, like most Democrats on Capitol Hill, he talks vaguely about cost savings but never really says how he proposes we pay for Medicare-for-all, or even Medicare-for-more.
Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, blasts Sen. Joe Lieberman for proposing that the Medicare eligibility age be raised from 65 to 67. That’s not exactly a novel cost-cutting plan but Lieberman, who is in his final 18 months in office, is one of the few lawmakers in Washington willing to put forward such a proposal.
The columnist makes a solid argument that Medicare holds down costs better than private insurance companies, but he fails to connect the dots by proposing the dismantling of the subsidized, employer-provided health care system.
Here’s Krugman’s take:
“Every once in a while a politician comes up with an idea that’s so bad, so wrongheaded, that you’re almost grateful. For really bad ideas can help illustrate the extent to which policy discourse has gone off the rails.
“And so it was with Senator Joseph Lieberman’s proposal, released last week, to raise the age for Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67.
“Like Republicans who want to end Medicare as we know it and replace it with (grossly inadequate) insurance vouchers, Mr. Lieberman describes his proposal as a way to save Medicare. It wouldn’t actually do that. But more to the point, our goal shouldn’t be to “save Medicare,” whatever that means. It should be to ensure that Americans get the health care they need, at a cost the nation can afford.
“ … Not every 65- or 66-year-old denied Medicare would be able to get private coverage — in fact, many would find themselves uninsured. So what would these seniors do?
“Well, as the health economists Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll document, right now Americans in their early 60s without health insurance routinely delay needed care, only to become very expensive Medicare recipients once they reach 65. This pattern would be even stronger and more destructive if Medicare eligibility were delayed. As a result, Mr. Frakt and Mr. Carroll suggest, Medicare spending might actually go up, not down, under Mr. Lieberman’s proposal.
“O.K., the obvious question: If Medicare is so much better than private insurance, why didn’t the Affordable Care Act simply extend Medicare to cover everyone? The answer, of course, was interest-group politics: realistically, given the insurance industry’s power, Medicare for all wasn’t going to pass, so advocates of universal coverage, myself included, were willing to settle for half a loaf. But the fact that it seemed politically necessary to accept a second-best solution for younger Americans is no reason to start dismantling the superior system we already have for those 65 and over.”
