The Congressional Progressive Caucus ramped up its push to expand Medicare by lowering the eligibility age at 60 instead of 65 and adding new benefits like dental, vision and hearing coverage in an upcoming legislative package presenting it to White House counselor Steve Ricchetti in a meeting Tuesday, The Hill writes.
The group’s proposals are also vocally pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders who claims too many seniors “can’t chew food properly” because they don’t have dental coverage.
Yet, Progressives’ proposal faces a strong rivalry from the health care priorities competing for a limited amount of dollars as well as concerns from the industry and Democrats who worry about lowering the Medicare age.
According to advocates and congressional aides, new benefits have a significantly better chance to make it into the Democratic-only package than lowering the eligibility age which is seen as more politically controversial as it opens up the debate about moving toward “Medicare for All.”
The call to lower the Medicare age and add dental, hearing and vision benefits included in the White House budget request for fiscal 2022 was notably left out of President Biden’s $1.8 trillion American Families Plan.
According to a White House official asked for a comment, President Biden backed expanding Medicare benefits in his speech to Congress in April and in his budget request, but gave no direct answer whether the White House supports including those measures in the reconciliation bill.
The lowering of the Medicare eligibility age is a big no-no for the health care industry who’s seeing it as a step toward more government-run coverage and away from private coverage with the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future- a group including pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and insurers- going a step further by running ads against it.
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s estimates in 2019, lowering the Medicare age to 60 would cost $200 billion over 10 years while adding dental, vision, and hearing would cost another $358 billion.
Hospitals also worry that Medicare pays lower rates to medical providers than private insurers do, which could lead to damaging cuts.
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