President Joe Biden recently released his budget proposal for 2024. His plan pledges to extend Medicare's solvency by at least 25 years "without cutting any benefits or raising costs for beneficiaries."

The president's math doesn't add up. His plan would burden taxpayers while leaving Medicare on the fast track to insolvency.

Medicare's Part A hospital insurance trust fund will run out of money in 2028, according to the most recent report from the program's trustees. Medicare's costs are projected to grow faster than the overall economy through the late 2070s. The president insists he can avert catastrophe by raising taxes on individuals who make more than $400,000. He also wants to subject more drugs to federal price controls than were included in the Inflation Reduction Act. The administration says the first idea would yield $650 billion and the second $204 billion over the next decade. All that money would be directed toward the Part A trust fund.

But in 10 years, the program's deficits are estimated to exceed $1 trillion , according to Scott Hodge, a policy expert at the Tax Foundation. In other words, the president's tax hikes and price controls won't come close to narrowing Medicare's deficit. To rescue Medicare from insolvency, lawmakers must pare back spending.

There are good ways to do so. We can start by raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. A 2018 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that raising the age by three months each year starting in 2023, until it was 67 for those born in 1965, could reduce deficits within the program by up to $22 billion between 2023 and 2028. Senior citizens account for around 17% of the U.S. population, compared with 10% when Medicare first began. On average, people live for 14 more years after becoming eligible for the program — up from nine years in 1965, when Medicare was created. Consequently, raising the eligibility age makes good sense.

Medicare is indeed in need of reform. But the president's proposed tax hikes and price controls aren't it. Republicans need to begin making their case for how they'll preserve the program for future generations.

Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Encounter 2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.