Abstract #300735

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JSM 2003 Abstract #300735
Activity Number: 72
Type: Invited
Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 2003 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Health Policy Statistics
Abstract - #300735
Title: Health Care Expenditure Burdens among Elderly Adults: 1987 and 1996
Author(s): Jessica S. Banthin*+
Companies: Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality
Address: Division of Modeling & Simulations, Rockville, MD, 20852,
Keywords: health expenditures ; Medicare ; out-of-pocket burdens
Abstract:

Concerns about the health care expenditure burdens of elderly adults underlie the current debates over proposals to reform Medicare benefits. We examine the changes over time in out-of-pocket expenditures on health care using data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES) and the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). We estimate the frequency with which seniors live in families facing health expenditures in excess of 20% or 40% of their after-tax disposable incomes. This approach helps avoid bias due to errors in income, while also providing an intuitive measure of exposure to the risk of paying high health care expenditure burdens. Despite rapid increases in medical care prices, the percentage of elderly adults facing burdens over 20% of disposable income remained essentially constant at 20.9% in 1987 and 22.9% in 1996. We observe little change in these frequencies over time. High burdens are more prevalent among seniors who are poorer, older, female, higher health risk, and covered by traditional Medicare coverage only.

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