Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)
In an interview with the Washington Post’s Suzy Khimm, North Dakota Democratic Senator Kent Conrad said that it would be “fair and balanced” to raise the Medicare age, which would require a huge cut in benefits to American seniors:
KHIMM: Obama has already suggested raising the retirement age for Medicare. Should that be the starting point for thinking about entitlement savings?
I wouldnai??i??t want that to be the starting point, but as part of an overall package, thatai??i??s balanced and fair. Given that we now have exchanges to purchase insurance because of the presidentai??i??s health-care reform law, it makes it much more acceptable, much more reasonable, over a long period of time to gradually increase the age given that people are living so much longer.
As ThinkProgress’s Igor Volsky writes, raising the Medicare age would create an enormous burden on seniors:
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, raising the eligibility age to 67 would cause an estimated net increase of $5.6 billion in out-of-pocket health insurance costs for beneficiaries who would have been otherwise covered by Medicare. Seniors in Medicare Part B would also face a 3 percent premium increase, the study found, since younger and healthier enrollees would be routed out of Medicare and into private insurance. Beneficiaries in health care reformai??i??s exchanges would see a similar spike in premiums with the addition of the older population.
Medicare isn’t the driver of our budget deficits — two wars, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and Wall Street’s recession are responsible for most of our debt. It’s simply unfair to ask American seniors to pay for a problem they did not cause.
Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren has an alternative, truly “balanced” approach. During a campaign debate last month, she laid out a popular, credible vision for dealing with the deficit: cut back on wasteful military and agriculture subsidy spending, and make the rich pay their fair share. Watch Warren explain:
Senator Conrad and your website obviously know nothing about Medicare and Social Security taxes used since Reagan as a government cookie jar, and also cannot see the disaster in “Austerity” plans that throw seniors under the bus. In a nation without national health care, that owes $3.5 TRILLION to the SSI Trust fund, I say…BEWARE. We have lost everything with the Bush Debacle, and you can fix this whole disaster by eliminating the Bush Tax Cuts, stopping the WARS, TAX the rich who have made increases in wealth averaging 725% to cover the rest. Touch SSI/Medicare…grab the third rail.
conrad is one we need to vote out in the next election, or maybe we will get lucky and he will retire.
We can’t. 🙁
Conrad is retiring this term, and will be replaced by Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp. At least he’s going though.
Hopefully the actual progressives stall him until his time is up…
Best solution Medicare for all.
Progressive Democrats need to change the method of the discussion about raising the top marginal tax rates.
EXPLAIN that the millionaires still get all the tax breaks of all the lower margins. They just don’t get the EXTRA tax break for money above the dividing line between the top two marginal brackets. But THEY DO STILL GET ALL THE BREAKS OF ALL THE LOWER MARGINS.
In other words: if you only make $20,000.00 – you get a tax break on that money. But if you make $1,000,000.00 – you too get the same tax break on the first $20,000.00. And every tax break on every margin all the way up. The Rich Man gets EVERY tax break every other American gets – you just don’t get the ANOTHER tax break for money over $250,000.00.
STOP allowing the Republicans to get away with saying “tax breaks for ALL Americans” because that’s nonsense since a break for the lowest margin already affects all Americans.
So remind people that what the Republicans are REALLY saying is “EXTRA tax breaks for RICH Americans”.
(Perhaps I’m being pedantic, but I believe the point needs to be hammered since I’m certain most people don’t realize this.)