RESEARCH: American Action Forum: H.R. 1346 – The Medicare Buy-in and Health Care Stabilization Act of 2019

In recent months, several lawmakers have released various versions of a Medicare buy-in proposal. Nearly all of them include allowing people aged 50 to 64 to buy into Medicare. In the following report, the Center for Health and Economy (H&E) evaluates the impact of one of these bills – H.R. 1346, “The Medicare Buy-in and Health Care Stabilization Act of 2019,” referred to in this paper as “the bill” – beginning in the year 2022. Consistent with other variations of Medicare buy-in, the bill would allow people from 50-64 years old to buy Medicare coverage for a premium based on the cost of their benefits, and it includes many individual market reforms.

Using its Under-65 Microsimulation Model, H&E analyzed the bill’s impact on health insurance coverage, provider access, medical productivity, and the federal budget. This report details the results of that analysis. All impacts projected in this report are relative to H&E’s July 2019 Baseline. As with all projections, the estimates are associated with some degree of uncertainty.