Biden Announces Plan to Expand Medicare and Forgive Student Loans

Presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden announced new plans to expand Medicare eligibility and forgive some student debt as he adapts his policy platform ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election to take into account the pandemic hit to the economy.

Biden said in a Medium post on Thursday that he would lower the age for Medicare eligibility to 60, at which point people would have the option of sticking with their employer plans or opting into Medicare.

“This would make Medicare available to a set of Americans who work hard and retire before they turn 65, or who would prefer to leave their employer plans, the public option, or other plans they access through the Affordable Care Act before they retire,” Biden wrote.

He said the proposal takes into account the likely scenario that after the COVID-19 crisis ends, older Americans may have a hard time finding a job.

Any new federal costs associated with the new proposal would come out of the Medicare Trust Fund, he said.

Regarding student debt, Biden said he would forgive federal student loans for low-income and middle-class people who attended public colleges and universities, historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), and underfunded minority-serving institutions (MSI).

“Under this plan, I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for debt-holders earning up to $125,000, with appropriate phase-outs to avoid a cliff,” he wrote.

Bidens new student debt proposals build on his existing plan to cancel $10,000 of student debt per person, forgive federal student loans after 20 years, and let people who make less than $25,000 per year forego monthly payments without accruing interest.

The money to pay for the additional student debt relief would come from repealing the “excess business losses” tax cut in the recently passed $2.2 trillion COVID-19 emergency bill signed into law on March 27.