Medicare revisited: a look through the past to the future.
This paper examines the elderly's out-of-pocket health care expenditures by category of expense, before and after the inception of Medicare. It describes the shifting of out-of-pocket expenses from hospital care to nursing-home care, while physician services and drugs have remained prominent components of out-of-pocket expenditures. Recent corrosive trends in the protection against out-of-pocket liability are discussed and analyzed. The author contends that the raging debate over the Medicare program must include and recognize the concerns of the elderly consumer.
D000368:Aged; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D004358:Drug Therapy / Q000191:economics; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000639:trends*; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000191:economics*; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000191:economics; D006801:Humans; D006278:Medicare / Q000191:economics*; D009735:Nursing Homes / Q000191:economics; D014481:United States