The Republican candidate said in Michigan that his plan to gradually raise eligibility age would save at least $2tn and ‘restore trust in the individual patient’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Ben Carson sought to reinvigorate his presidential campaign late on Wednesday by rolling out a proposed healthcare overhaul that would eventually increase the Medicare eligibility age to 70.

The Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon appeared confident before a crowd of 250 at Eastern Michigan University, speaking on a subject he has drawn a national following for: healthcare. Carson, a native of nearby Detroit, rallied the crowd around his plan that would repeal Obamacare, one of the few lines that drew applause in his nearly hourlong remarks.

“We don’t want a bunch of bureaucrats dictating to people what they ought to do,” Carson said in his deadpan delivery.

The main feature of his proposal is the expansion of tax-free health empowerment accounts (HEAs), which would be paired with high-deductible major medical coverage.

The 64-year-old used the town hall setting mostly to roll out his 10-page proposed healthcare overhaul – a plan that aims to gradually increase the Medicare eligibility age to 70 and, he wrote in the proposal released on Wednesday, would “restore trust in the individual patient”.

“Instead of removing choices and restricting options,” Carson wrote, “I would return to an approach that places the relationship between patient and doctor at the forefront.”

The proposal was vague on financial specifics; it didn’t include an estimated cost or economic impact. Carson told reporters after the town hall that he believes it would save between $2tn-$4tn over a decade.

Characterizing the Medicare overhaul as a “market-based approach”, Carson said the age of eligibility for applicants would be increased over the next three decades by two months each year, until it hits 70.

Carson conceded the proposal would have to overcome several legislative hurdles to be implemented. Part of the proposal also calls for a revamped Medicaid program, something he said has become a “false promise” for users.

“Instead of Obamacare’s parallel, two-tiered system that channels low-income persons into substandard traditional Medicaid, my plan, while it does not eliminate Medicaid, creates a bridge that will enable enrollees to obtain the same private health insurance that other Americans enjoy, with the same choice of doctors and hospitals,” Carson wrote in the proposal. “It is long past time that Medicaid enrollees have equal access to quality medical care.”

Under the proposal, Medicaid recipients would have an option to select a private insurer through a state-funded Medicaid program.

The speech on Wednesday didn’t focus entirely on healthcare. Discussing his recent trip to Syria and Jordan, Carson said he wanted to hear from refugees and “what they thought the solution was”.

“They wanted to be back in their own country,” Carson asserted.

Carson, a devout Christian currently polling in the middle of the Republican field, echoed Trump’s remarks from earlier this week, when the GOP frontrunner defended his Muslim ban by asking of American Muslims: “We want you to turn in the bad ones.”

Carson said he doesn’t want Muslims to be persecuted simply “because of what they look like”.

“I don’t want to see that happen in our country,” he said. “But I know that will eventually happen if we don’t have a way of distinguishing the good ones from the bad ones.”