The Risk of Out-of-Pocket Health Care Expenditure at End of Life

Marshall, Samuel; McGarry, Kathleen; Skinner, Jonathan

doi:10.3386/w16170

Cited by 57 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Using newer and more comprehensive data, De Nardi , French, and Jones (2010) and Marshall, McGarry, and Skinner (2011) find that late-in-life medical expenses are large and generate powerful savings incentives. Furthermore, Poterba, Venti, and Wise (2010) show that those in poor health have considerably lower assets than similar individuals in good health.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

Nardi

French

Jones

2016

American Economic Review

130

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Many elderly households benefit from Medicaid, a means-tested, public health insurance program. Despite the increasing importance of Medicaid in the presence of an aging population and rising medical costs, very little is known about how Medicaid payments are distributed among the elderly and how the elderly value these payments. Which elderly households receive Medicaid transfers? How redistributive are these transfers and the taxes needed to finance them? What is the insurance value of these transfers? Is Medicaid of about the right size? How much would people lose if it were cut? These are important questions to answer before reforming the programs currently in place. In this paper we seek to fill this gap.We focus on single retirees, who comprise about 50 percent of people aged 70 or older and 70 percent of households aged 70 or older. We document new facts on Medicaid recipiency in the Assets and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD) data and show that, while the recipiency rate in the bottom income quintile is around 70 percent throughout retirement, the recipiency rate of higher-income

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

Nardi

French

Jones

2016

American Economic Review

130

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“…As a result, they underestimate the extent to which medical expenses rise with age and income. DeNardi et al [12] and Marshall, McGarry, and Skinner [37] find that late life medical expenses are large and generate powerful savings incentives. Furthermore, Poterba, Venti, and Wise [48] show that those in poor health have considerably lower assets than similar individuals in good health.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

2012

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractMedicaid was primarily designed to protect and insure the poor against medical shocks. Yet, poorer people tend to live shorter lifespans and incur lower medical expenses before death than richer people. Taking these and other important dimensions of heterogeneity into account, and carefully modeling key institutional aspects, we estimate a structural model of savings and endogenous medical expenses to assess the costs and benefits of Medicaid for single retirees.We show that even higher-income retirees benefit from Medicaid, if they live long enough for their resources to be depleted by medical expenses. We also find that all retirees value Medicaid insurance coverage highly, compared to the value of the Medicaid transfers that they actually receive on average.

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“…Using newer and more comprehensive data, De Nardi et al [19] and Marshall, McGarry, and Skinner [49] find that late-in-life medical expenses are large and generate powerful savings incentives. Furthermore, Poterba, Venti, and Wise [62] show that those in poor health have considerably lower assets than similar individuals in good health.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

Nardi¹,

French²,

Jones³

2013

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The old age provisions of the Medicaid program were designed to insure poor retirees against medical expenses. However, it is the rich who are most likely to live long and face expensive medical conditions when very old. We estimate a structural model of savings and endogenous medical spending with heterogeneous agents and use it to compute the distribution of lifetime Medicaid transfers and Medicaid valuations across currently single retirees.We find that retirees with high lifetime incomes can end up on Medicaid and often value Medicaid insurance the most, as they face a larger risk of catastrophic medical needs at old ages and face the greatest consumption risk. Compensating variation calculations indicate that current retirees value Medicaid insurance at more than its actuarial cost, but that most would value an expansion of the current Medicaid program at less than its cost. These findings suggest that for current single retirees, the Medicaid program may be of the approximately right size.

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The Risk of Out-of-Pocket Health Care Expenditure at End of Life

Cited by 57 publications

References 18 publications

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

Medicaid Insurance in Old Age

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