Others are married to retirees who have insurance through Medicare but themselves are ineligible for Medicare. Others are hard hit by employers' cutting back on retiree benefits. Another idea is to allow early retirees who are choosing to start collecting their Social Security benefits starting at age 62 to buy into Medicare on a sliding scale. According to The Commonwealth Fund, these kinds of provisions would cover 600,000 spouses and 300,000 children of Medicare beneficiaries, as well as nearly 1.2 million early retirees. But, said Dr. Davis, the hefty price tag for early Medicare benefits would make this an option only for a small percentage of those eligible.
Location is critical.
Since access to insurance varies widely among the different states, it's clear that states have leeway to slash the numbers of uninsured within their boundaries. In other words, it will not necessarily take a federal law to make more of a difference. In contrast, other states allow only those families living substantially below the federal poverty level to be eligible for welfare. In 1996, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which collects data on health care use, found that lack of insurance was a bigger problem in the South and West than in the Northeast or Midwest. Without some federal guidelines, therefore, most analysts feel this geographic disparity is likely to grow.