Reply #56: It would cost more [View All]

[Yo_Mama]

See, if you go out on disability you get your full retirement benefit. Plus you get early Medicare (Medicare after two years), but you get Medicaid in the interim usually.

If you take early retirement, you get less. So back when they raised the full retirement age to 67, they ran the numbers and they figured it would probably cost more to raise the early retirement age.

You can't save any money by pretending that old folks aren't old. The number of people able to work full time at 65 is not that great. If they try, they get stress illnesses. By that time everything from arthritis to high blood pressure is catching up with you. A lot of people have medical problems that begin in their 50s that aren't that serious, but as they get into their sixties their bodies don't deal with stress that well, so those problems snowball quickly.