Potential effects of raising Medicare's eligibility age.

Recent fiscal pressures on Medicare and an already enacted increase in Social Security's normal retirement age have generated discussion of raising Medicare's age of entitlement. This DataWatch examines potential impacts of raising Medicare's eligibility age to sixty-seven on public-sector health spending and individual insurance coverage. The proposed increase would affect a substantial fraction of beneficiaries without having a commensurate effect on expenditures, even in the long run. It is estimated that if the eligibility age were sixty-seven, upwards of 500,000 persons ages sixty-five and sixty-six would be left without any insurance, and even more would not be able to afford coverage with benefits similar to those of Medicare.