‘Boomers’ set to swamp US seniors’ health programme

The struggling US Medicare programme is about to be swamped as the post-World War II generation becomes eligible for the government-administered health insurance for seniors.

Thousands of the oldest of the so-called baby boomers – people born between 1946 and 1964 – will today turn 65, the age at which they become eligible for the Medicare programme for older Americans that has been run by the US government since 1965.

A baby boomer will turn 65 every eight seconds this year, meaning Medicare will gain some 7,000 potential new beneficiaries a day next year, according to the AARP, a non-profit organisation that aims to improve the quality of life for older Americans.

That would mean more than 2.5 million potential new Medicare recipients next year alone.

Over the next two decades, more than 70 million people are projected to become eligible for Medicare, which covered 45.2 million people in 2008.

As the number of Americans who are eligible for Medicare grows, spending on the programme is projected to expand from 3.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2009 to 6.4 per cent in 2030.

That is largely because health care costs rise faster than inflation but also because of the increased demand placed on the program by an aging population.

Those two factors combined have raised concerns that the health program for US seniors could become insolvent during the lifetime of baby boomers, who have paid into Medicare throughout their working lives. But John Rother, executive vice president for policy at the AARP, said those concerns were alarmist and there was no need to sound Medicare’s death knell just yet.

“We do need to do better at getting higher value for the dollar in all health care programs, including Medicare, and it’s true that so many boomers enrolling in the programme is going to add a sense of urgency to that,” Dr Rother said.

“But it’s also true that people who are 65 and first eligible for Medicare statistically do not use much in the way of health services. It’s only when they get into their mid-70s and 80s that they’re likely to need intensive and expensive health care,” he added.

“We have some time to make adjustments.” Medicare doesn’t pay for all of a person’s medical costs, but the AARP says it can still be a “very welcome 65th birthday present.”

The programme is backed by a majority of Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which says that “meeting the health care needs of an aging population is a pressing challenge for the nation.”

To keep Medicare afloat, US lawmakers have proposed raising the age at which people can receive benefits from the programme.

But Dr Rother said that would “just change who pays the bill,” while newspaper commentator John Curtis wrote in the Los Angeles City Buzz Examiner that raising the eligibility age would be “no fix at all.”

Dr Curtis suggested a means test to determine whether a person is eligible for Medicare.

“If beneficiaries have the means to provide for their own retirement income and health insurance, then the government should not pay for it,” he wrote.

“Millionaires and billionaires earning retirement incomes above $250,000 must forego Social Security income and pay for Medicare premiums.”