Medicare at 60

In the past I have pointed out that by getting rid of the third party payer (insurance companies) we could reduce health care cost. This is because administrative cost are 25 to 30 percent and this would eliminate 10 million jobs in the insurance industry. Medicare on the other hand has administrative cost of only 9%. While the total care cost per person in Medicare is high that is because of the ages of the patients. If we want to reduce the total health care cost to the country we should lower the Medicare age to 60 instead of raising it to 67. As more and more people are transferred to Obamacare the roll of private insurance will decrease and administrative savings will follow. When everyone is covered by government health insurance then there is a very real potential problem. Once the government has a monopoly then like all government programs inefficiencies will crop up and cost will likely get out of hand. Procedures to ration benefits will be introduced to help reduce cost. I have maintained from the beginning that the only long term solution to rising health care cost is to ration care and this is where we are heading as this is what happens in other countries that have national health care.