3 ms·
"Seventy-seven percent of the Medicare decedents' total healthcare expenditures occur in their last year of life, a staggering 52% in the last 2 months, and 40%
by pcurve 7y ago
"Seventy-seven percent of the Medicare decedents' total healthcare expenditures occur in their last year of life, a staggering 52% in the last 2 months, and 40% in the last month."
That's a lot worse than I thought.
The inverted pyramid age distribution mentioned in his article is already happening in some countries
- shantly 7y agoAFAIK this distribution of expenses is why "Medicare for all" isn't that much more expensive than just "Medicare + Medicaid" (which is to say, public health care spending as it exists already). Consider also how many of the most expensive younger folks, being the ones with major chronic illnesses, are already unable to work and on Medicaid. Everyone else is relatively healthy, on average, and so pretty cheap to cover. I'd bet by far the largest remaining expenses among that mostly-healthy-and-not-already-covered-by-public-programs segment are pregnancy, births, and first month or two of care for sick or premature newborns.
- pcurve 7y agoYou are right. I did some digging. Cost of premature birth cost 26 billion per year. Last 6 month end of life care 170 billion. We are so desensitized to figures in billions because we regularly hear about companies market cap approaching 1 trillion and people with wealth of 100 billion. But entire tax revenue is only 3.3 tril.
- glofish 7y agoBut is it true? The numbers feel awfully skewed - common sense tells me can't be right. Then I did a Google search, found this: "The Myth Regarding the High Cost of End-of-Life Care" from 2015 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638261/ they report that 13% is spent during the last year(!) of life. Also, just like with retirement benefits, the real question, did beneficiary paid for it nor not? Frequently these numbers are tossed around as these were "free handouts" - but we do pay for these all the time - and of course since it is insurance there will be people that get out more of it than others. That makes either neither unfair nor something that should be fixed. It is working as intended.
- pcurve 7y agoIn the article you referenced it says" 1627 billion spent on health care in 2011, we estimate that approximately 13%, or $205 billion, was devoted to care of individuals in their last year of life." It says 13% but the dollar figure still says over 200 billion, and that's 2011 figure. It's difference between total health expenditure vs. medicare.
- glofish 7y agoI am not sure what you are getting at. Are you saying the research paper got their conclusion and with that title wrong? In my opinion, for anyone that cares about the scientific accuracy content of the paper titled "The Myth Regarding the High Cost of End-of-Life Care" should be more credible than that "comment"/"blog post"/opinion piece "Life is a Ponzi Scheme". This is what is so wrong with this original post - it a not a curated, reviewed article. Just a subjective and superficial opinion - but because it was published in an otherwise selective journal it gets more credibility.
- pcurve 7y agoMy point is percentage is different because they used different demoniators. But dollar amount in numerator is the basically the same. The former author didn't just pull number out of thing air.