How raising the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare might affect the disability insurance and Medicare programs

The normal age of retirement is scheduled to increase to 67 by 2022, and several proposals to increase it to age 70 are being considered. The Medicare eligibility age is not scheduled to increase under current law, but proposals to raise it in step with the retirement age were recently considered by the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare (1999). This article examines how raising both the normal retirement age and the Medicare eligibility age would affect Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) eligibility, Medicare eligibility, and Medicare expenditures under two hypothetical policy scenarios. The first (the 2022 age-67 scenario) assumes that the eligibility age is raised to 67 by 2022, in step with the scheduled increase in the normal retirement age. The second (the 2040 age-70 scenario) assumes that the eligibility ages are increased to 70 by 2040. The findings are based on a summary of two reports. The earlier one (Wittenburg and others 1999) describes a series of microsimulation models developed from data in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS). The base simulations in that report assume that the normal retirement and Medicare eligibility ages had already been increased in 1993, when the SIPP and MCBS respondents were observed. In the later report (Wittenburg, Stapleton, and Scrivner 2000), adjustment factors were developed to reflect future increases in Medicare expenditures, population growth, and increased participation in DI. The base simulations were then adjusted by those factors, yielding a final set of annual projections under the two policy scenarios. The hypothetical policy scenarios illustrate that the major cost reductions from jointly raising the Medicare eligibility age and the normal age of retirement would not be realized until after 2020, when the increases are fully phased in and a large portion of baby boomers have reached age 65. Although the projections provide important cost estimates, the equity and efficiency of those policies must be studied before the desirability of any specific proposal can be evaluated fully.