Coburn, Lieberman seek to raise Medicare age to 67

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Two Sen­ate rebels jumped into Con­gress’ cut-the-deficit com­pe­ti­tion on Tues­day, propos­ing to raise the age of Medicare eli­gi­bil­ity to 67 and increase monthly pre­mi­ums for mil­lions of cur­rent beneficiaries.

“We can’t save Medicare as we know it,” said Sen. Joseph Lieber­man, I-Conn., who authored the plan with Repub­li­can Sen. Tom Coburn of Okla­homa. “We can only save Medicare if we change it,” he added in an appar­ent jab at Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and con­gres­sional Democrats.

Democ­rats reacted with crit­i­cism of the pro­posal, which Coburn said was designed to res­cue the finan­cially imper­iled pro­gram and help the nation con­front a “wall of debt.” Repub­li­cans betrayed no sign of sup­port either.

If noth­ing else, the response under­scored the dif­fi­culty of leg­isla­tive free-lancing at a time the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and con­gres­sional lead­ers are strug­gling to nego­ti­ate a com­pro­mise that cuts future deficits and clears the way for an increase in the nation’s $14.3 tril­lion debt.

With­out a debt limit increase by Aug. 2, Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Tim­o­thy Gei­th­ner has warned, the gov­ern­ment could default, risk­ing calamity for the U.S. econ­omy and seri­ous effects worldwide.

Repub­li­cans walked out of bipar­ti­san talks last week but nev­er­the­less said nego­ti­a­tions had been fruit­ful. In the days since, Obama has stepped up his per­sonal involve­ment in the effort.

After meet­ing sep­a­rately with the Senate’s Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­tic lead­ers on Mon­day, he invited the Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship to a White House meet­ing on Wednesday.

In the ear­lier talks, led by Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, key law­mak­ers had out­lined a series of pro­pos­als to cut sev­eral hun­dred bil­lion dol­lars over the next decade.

Other pro­posed cuts were on the table, includ­ing nearly $1 tril­lion from the assumed end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Offi­cials famil­iar with the nego­ti­a­tions say Repub­li­cans are reluc­tant to count that money toward any agree­ment, say­ing they want more tan­gi­ble cuts in domes­tic pro­grams before agree­ing to vote for an increased debt limit.

Also in the way of an agree­ment is a par­ti­san dis­pute over taxes, which Repub­li­cans don’t want raised, and Medicare ben­e­fits, which Democ­rats don’t want cut.

Lieber­man and Coburn were not nearly as reluc­tant, includ­ing both in their pre­scrip­tion for Medicare.

“Nobody’s going to like this plan, we under­stand that,” said Lieber­man, who was the Demo­c­ra­tic vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 2000 but is now an inde­pen­dent who reg­u­larly picks spots to chal­lenge his for­mer party.

His state­ment that Medicare can’t be saved in its cur­rent form seemed a direct rebut­tal to Obama, who said ear­lier this year that a House Repub­li­can pro­posal would “end Medicare as we know it” — some­thing he vowed would not hap­pen while he was in the White House.

Coburn is a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can. But he chal­lenged his party ortho­doxy ear­lier this year when he said he was will­ing to include higher rev­enues as part of any deficit-reduction deal.

The plan the two men out­lined includes a grad­ual increase over the next five years in the monthly pre­mium that seniors pay for doc­tor and other non-hospital ser­vices. Aides said it would trans­late into a monthly increase of $15 to $20 initially.

The age of eli­gi­bil­ity would rise grad­u­ally from 65 to 67.

For the first time, better-off seniors would be charged more money for Medicare Part A, which cov­ers hos­pi­tal care.

The same group already pays more for doc­tor vis­its as well as for pre­scrip­tion drug cov­er­age and, under the plan, would face even higher monthly premiums.

A major source of sav­ings would come from mak­ing sure seniors pay out of pocket for at least a por­tion of their care. To accom­plish that, Lieber­man and Coburn pro­posed bar­ring insur­ance com­pa­nies from sell­ing Medi­gap poli­cies that offer first-dollar coverage.

The plan by Lieber­man and Coburn would pre­serve Medicare as a gov­ern­ment pro­gram, unlike a House GOP pro­posal that would require mil­lions of future ben­e­fi­cia­ries to pur­chase cov­er­age from pri­vate insur­ance companies.

Addi­tion­ally, the plan includes a $7,500 limit on out-of-pocket costs for doc­tor or hos­pi­tal cov­er­age, a pro­vi­sion designed to pro­tect seniors who face poten­tially cat­a­strophic costs.

Accord­ing to the most recent report by the Medicare trustees, the giant program’s insur­ance fund is pro­jected to run out of money in 2024, five years ear­lier than last year’s estimate.

Posted by AP News on Jun 28 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.