Raising Medicare Age Will Raise Total Health Expenditures

The government could save money by raising the Medicare age, but it would cost the country even more money than the government would save and increase total national health spending.  That increase in spending is why the health lobby has been supporting the change behind the scenes.  Washington Post:

The Health Leadership Council, a consortium of 47 health industry leaders including Aetna, Pfizer and the Cleveland Clinic, endorsed today to raise Medicare’s eligibility age from 65 to 67, phasing in the change by two months annually. Raising Medicare's eligibility age is one proposal in a four-part package of Medicare reforms up for vote, including creating a new exchange-like marketplace and increasing the cost-sharing for seniors who earn more than $150,000. You can read the full proposal here....
There’s a pretty simple explanation for why hospitals and some insurers would favor raising the eligibility age: Hospitals receive higher payments from private insurance than they do from Medicare. The payments that hospitals receive from private insurers are 28 percent above the break-even point for providing treatment, according to a recent report from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. Medicare pays only 91 percent of what it costs a hospital to provide care.
...Heath insurers, too, could stand to benefit if 5 million seniors in that age bracket move into the private market. A number of health reform provisions -- in particular the mandated purchase of insurance ...would presumably push those seniors to buy health insurance rather than go uninsured.

....the American Hospital Association is lobbying the supercommittee to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. As Politico reported last week, “The association is urging its nearly 5,000 members to lobby Congress to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.”

...“This policy does nothing to control costs,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, wrote in a memo obtained by the New York Times. “It simply shifts substantial costs from Medicare to other parts of government and to private and public employers.”
The Budget and Policy center estimates that if the Medicare eligibility age were raised, seniors under age 67 would have to spend $3.7 billion more in out-of-pocket cost. For many in the political system, that’s enough to reject the idea out of hand. But for some in the health-care system, that’s a profit waiting to be made.

The only age demographic where a majority opposed Obamacare was people older than 65 because they feared that it would take away from their universal socialized health insurance.  I didn't think that would happen, but it turns out they may have been right.  Now that Obamacare provides a viable alternative mechanism for insuring seniors (mandate, regulate, and subsidize private insurance), politicians are already talking about rolling back Medicare.