By Isela Blanc
We all want to make health care more affordable and accessible for those who need it, particularly more vulnerable populations with higher health care needs, like seniors. However, in the effort to expand access to affordable, high-quality coverage and care, we must also be careful not to put existing programs that are serving these very communities at risk.
Medicare expansion proposals—including a Medicare “buy-in” and Medicare at 60—are particularly dangerous as they could threaten access to the quality of care for America’s seniors while putting the program at an even greater risk financially than it already is. Threatening access to care for millions of at-risk patients here in Arizona and across the country is no way to strengthen our health care system.
These kinds of proposals would vastly and irresponsibly expand the number of Medicare enrollees, flooding the program with tens of millions of Americans, including the health care bills associated with that influx. Medicare was designed to meet the needs of one specific patient group: our nation’s seniors. It simply does not have the infrastructure or the funding to support so many new patients so fast.
As it is, I already hear from former constituents who are 65 years and older about the long wait times they must endure to receive the medical care they need. Adding tens of millions of Americans to Medicare rosters could reduce access for seniors and increase waiting times as well as costs, especially in low income minority communities.
Without a doubt, Medicare is hugely important to the tens of millions of seniors who have paid into the program their entire working lives. However, the program is already on shaky financial ground, with Medicare trustees warning it is at risk for today’s seniors.
One part of the program—the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, which pays out Medicare Part A benefits—is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to be depleted in 2026. This could happen even sooner if the government embraces an expansion proposal like Medicare at 60.
Passage of the American Rescue Plan Act in Congress, as well as other federal efforts, are helping to expand health care coverage and access to millions of new Americans. Let’s focus on efforts like these that strengthen our current health care system by building on what’s working rather than introducing proposals that could undermine Medicare and threaten health care for tens of millions of seniors.
Isela Blanc is a Democrat and former Arizona State Representative for District 26, serving from 2017-2021