[rodguy911]

Just bump up the age and keep bumping it up as we live longer its not rocket science. People won’t like it but we see where feel good govt. leads.

[kabar]

It is not enough to bump up the age. Medical costs are growing faster than inflation. And one of the reasons we are living longer is that we have better medical care. I can see means testing playing a bigger and bigger role.

One of the biggest costs is long term care and the so-called dual eligibles under Medicaid and Medicare. We are going to see an explosion in long term care costs. From the Census Bureau:

In 2056, for the first time, the older population, age 65 and over, is projected to outnumber the young, age under 18.

The working-age population (18 to 64) is expected to increase by 42 million between 2012 and 2060, from 197 million to 239 million, while its share of the total population declines from 62.7 percent to 56.9 percent.

According to the projections, the population age 65 and older is expected to more than double between 2012 and 2060, from 43.1 million to 92.0 million. The older population would represent just over one in five U.S. residents by the end of the period, up from one in seven today. The increase in the number of the “oldest old” would be even more dramatic — those 85 and older are projected to more than triple from 5.9 million to 18.2 million, reaching 4.3 percent of the total population.