http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/23/news/economy/medicare-age/index.html?iid=SF_E_LN
This article discusses how young workers can be negatively impacted due an increase in the age requirement for medicare. This is because elderly workers are not going to retire and lose their healthcare from their employer without being covered by medicare. Because there are less people retiring, it is harder for younger workers to obtain entry level positions and it is harder for people mid-career to advance. It was reported that in 2012, 18.5% of the workforce was 65 or over. This is up from the 16% of the senior citizens who were working in 2007. Comparatively, the percentage of workers with the ages 25-54 decreased from 83% to 81.4% in 2012 and 2007. I think that while this article has good points, it overlooks that there are many elderly workers who continue to work for reasons other than health insurance. It give the impression that elderly employees should not be working, even though they have just as much of a right to work as young employees if they so choose.
This article discusses how young workers can be negatively impacted due an increase in the age requirement for medicare. This is because elderly workers are not going to retire and lose their healthcare from their employer without being covered by medicare. Because there are less people retiring, it is harder for younger workers to obtain entry level positions and it is harder for people mid-career to advance. It was reported that in 2012, 18.5% of the workforce was 65 or over. This is up from the 16% of the senior citizens who were working in 2007. Comparatively, the percentage of workers with the ages 25-54 decreased from 83% to 81.4% in 2012 and 2007. I think that while this article has good points, it overlooks that there are many elderly workers who continue to work for reasons other than health insurance. It give the impression that elderly employees should not be working, even though they have just as much of a right to work as young employees if they so choose.
3 comments:
With the average life expectancy increasing, it would only make sense for the age requirement for medicare to increase. The government would be in even more trouble with the possibility of social security running out if the majority of workers retired at the previously expected age to receive medicare, 65. If the individuals are able to continue working, they should do so.
With the baby boomers finally retiring it puts a ton of stress on the economy because they retire and need the extra income from the government not allowing for younger generations to recieve the same benefits meaning that drastic changes are going to have to be made to make sure everyone recieves equal benefits
While I agree that raising the medicare age could hurt young workers, I'm skeptical of some of the numbers reported in this article. I believe some of the industries hit hardest by the recession required more manual labor than the average industry, meaning they were populated by relatively younger people. For example, the construction industry had an unemployment rate of 16% in 2011, and fell to only 13.5% in 2012. I'm not saying that this is entirely to blame for these statistics, but I think the nature of the recession has a lot to do with what we're seeing here.
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