The idea of means-testing Medicare resurfaced this week in a set of demands from Sen. Joe Manchin. It’s a major source of tension for Democrats looking for a path forward on their social spending package.
this week in a set of demands Sen. Joe Manchin made to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in which he outlined his criteria for a $1.5 trillion package. | Stefani Reynolds-Pool/Getty ImagesMeans-testing Medicare, a long-running controversy in health policy debates, is re-emerging as a major source of tension for Democrats seeking a path forward on their stalled social spending package.
“If you have scarce federal dollars, this is where you want to put your money,” said Michael Graham, the dental group’s senior vice president of government affairs, who is pushing Congress to offer the new dental benefit only to people with incomes below 300 percent of the federal poverty line — or around $39,000 a year.
“There’s a simplicity element to just offering the benefit to everyone,” he said. “In retirement your income fluctuates even more than when you’re working, and distributions from retirement accounts can be one-time windfalls. If you kick people out of the program and then allow them to reapply the next year, the amount of money you save could be so low that it wouldn’t outweigh the added complexity.
“We’ve got colleagues offering a variety of opinions on when [the dental, vision and hearing benefits] should start, who is covered and the extent of it,” he said., buying digital ads, sending tens of thousands of emails to Capitol Hill and holding Zoom meetings with lawmakers and staff. “Once a program exists long-term, it becomes part of the status quo,” he said. “This is the same basic premise. If this becomes a popular product for seniors, it will become difficult for dentists to not take Medicare patients.”
Critics of the idea also argue that limiting the program to poorer seniors makes all of society less invested in maintaining the program, making it more politically vulnerable to getting cut back or eliminated in years to come.
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