Long-Term Trends in Life Expectancy and Active Life Expectancy in the United States (original) (raw)
2006, Population and Development Review
THREE IMPORTANT FEDERAL health policy issues being debated in the United States are: (1) the long-term stability of the Social Security Old-Age and Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program; (2) the costs of the expansion of Medicare mandated by the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 to include an outpatient prescription drug benefit starting in 2006 (i.e., Medicare Part D) and efforts to improve the health outcomes of Medicarereimbursed health care (Miller 2005); and (3) recent and projected rapid increases in Medicaid expenditures due to the growth of the US population aged 85 and older, many of whom require long-term care. Demographic factors underlying these debates include: increases in life expectancy at later ages in the US population owing to continuing declines in heart disease, stroke, and, more recently, cancer mortality; the growth of the US elderly and oldest-old populations; and the large size of the post-World War II baby boom cohorts that become eligible for Social Security and Medicare starting in 2011. Medicare is a health insurance program for people aged 65 and older, people under age 65 with certain disabilities, and people of all ages with end-stage renal disease. Medicaid is the health care insurer of last resort for those persons with significant (and often long-term) health care needs whose social and economic resources have been exhausted. Clearly, demographic and health conditions in the United States have changed dramatically since the Social Security system was instituted in 1935 and the Medicare and Medicaid systems were instituted in 1965. Yet many health policy analysts fail to take into account long-term changes in the health and functional status of the beneficiary population in analyses of both sets of programs. Equally they fail to directly link the effects of improved health and func
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