Republicans in Congress have titled their new budget proposal “Brighter American Future,” but this new proposal would only make seniors wait longer to qualify for Medicare and reduce an extra funding source for some people who are receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits.
According to a story in the Times Record, an Arkansas newspaper, U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Arkansas, informed citizens of the Republican plan at a town hall meeting in Fort Smith, AR Aug. 14.
Womack, who is the new chairman of the House Budget Committee, said there are two key components of the plan. The first is to increase the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 and the other would be to prevent anyone receiving SSDI benefits from also collecting unemployment insurance benefits. The full retirement age to begin collecting Social Security retirement benefits is 67 for everyone born 1960 and later. Womack referred to the Medicare proposal as a “minor tweak.”
“We just simply say in order to save the program from insolvency we can do an index over several years of brining people, for some it might be delayed for a couple of months, for others it might be six months, in the worst case scenario it would be two years, but to go from 65 to 67,” Womack was quoted in the story about the Medicare change.
Despite Womack’s claim that making older Americans wait an additional two years to be eligible for Medicare is a “minor tweak” most Americans may fee differently. In 2015 the Kaiser Family Foundation commissioned a survey about potential changes to Medicare. The responses were broken down between three different age groups, 18-54; 55-64 and those 65 and older. One of the questions asked whether the respondent supported increasing the Medicare age from 65 to 67. The group of people who were 65 and older, some of who presumably were already age 67 and older at the time of the survey, were split on the idea. Exactly 50 percent of respondents approved and 50 percent were against the proposal. The people age 55-64 were least supportive, as 67 percent of respondents opposed the idea and people age 18-54 were also against the idea, with 62 percent opposed.
The Unemployment Issue
Claire Burghoff, communications director for the House Budget Committee, responded to Womack’s unveiling of the proposal by indicating, in an email according to this blog post, that the only recommended change to Social Security advocated in the proposal was “closing a loophole with disability insurance” that “allows someone to collect unemployment.”
It is curious how Burghoff and Womack both referred to collecting unemployment insurance and SSDI at the same time as a “loophole,” almost comparing it to some tax avoidance measure billionaires and millionaires use. Neither also addressed how closing this “loophole” would help the Social Security trust funds. Unemployment insurance is administered by each state and every state has different requirements relating to eligibility based on the ability to work. The ability to work can differentiate based on a worker’s age, their past work and the current labor market and it would be difficult to foresee how such a proposal would be instituted in 50 different states that have 50 different types of unemployment insurance requirements.
