4 ms·

In the US, elderly people have Medicare, so why is this happening?

by notsureaboutpg 6y ago

Forbo 6y ago
I vouched for your comment, because I'm also curious. What healthcare costs is Medicare not covering?
- giantg2 6y ago
  There are parts A-D. They can vary by part and by state, other factors too. I think you generally pay about $1k-$2k per year in premiums in total for all parts. There are also deductibles and copays. For example, the deductible is about $1500 for hospital stays and copays for doctors visits is 20% of the medicare approved costs. So it's lower than private insurance, but not negligible. It can get pretty expensive if you require lots of procedures or medications, as many people do at that age. Here is an article claiming the average cost for A and B parts is almost $8k per year. https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/02/05/heres-the-average-americans-annual-medicare-bill.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/02/05/heres-the-average...
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    My plan is to beat the game by not playing.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Medicare pays primarily for emergency hospitalization scenarios (referred to as Part A). Anything that happens outside of a hospital stay (called outpatient services) and medications come from Parts B, C, and D. Coverage for parts B, C, and D is insanely complicated and involves some means testing and who knows what else. There’s private health insurers involved too, and if you can’t afford that, then you can go to the state’s Medicaid, which is also means tested. The whole thing makes you want to kill yourself, which might be the objective.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    And "Medicare for all" is a serious proposal?
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I don’t think people mean copy it in it’s current form, at least not forever. It’s just a catchy name to refer to a program where the government pays for healthcare, even though the current iteration of Medicare is hardly that. The idea is probably to expand the current system to everyone, which is better than nothing, and then work on improving it.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        I would image that's the plan, although with different motives. By placing a majority of the people into a broken system, you bring the people's attention to it and force a new system into existence using that public support. If you look at the strategy behind the ACA, it is intended to lay the framework for a replacement by a federal plan/system.
      - seanicus 6y ago
        Hard to get velocity behind improving something half the voting population would rather be rid of, even if it's against the very same voting population's best interest. So it goes in the US.
        giantg2 6y ago
        Well it makes sense if you have politicians consistently selling you misrepresented ideas like "Medicare for all" or "Defund the police". Of course you will start to lose trust in the system and the officials. I think the bigger issue is how the divide between the parties happens. People seem to demonize the other side based on a specific issue that is important to them and then extrapolate that view to all positions held by the party on the basis that "all [party] politicians are stupid because of their stance on [issue] so their ideas on other issues are stupid too". For a generalized example, the divide is mostly urban vs rural (even in other countries). A major single-issue voting topic would be gun rights vs gun control. A rural person thinks a new gun control law is stupid because the law seeks to ban certain items that statistically don't cause many problems and they find utility in their gun rights (more likely to hunt, slow police response, etc). An urban person would think the new law is good because "why does anyone need that item" and they find little to no utility in those rights (less likely to own a gun, carry a gun, hunt, faster police response, more exposure to the negative news/affects just due to population density). Each side thinks the other is stupid on this subject. People then think, hey the urban person wants to take away my rights on guns on (what appears as) stupid reasoning, so I don't trust their proposal to federalize healthcare because their logic/brain must be deficient. Then urban people will say these dumb hicks "...are clinging to their guns and bibles..." so they must be too stupid to know what's good for them. Which leads to neither side actually listening to the concerns of the other like a community should and instead just trying to gain full control of the government to ram through whatever laws their side wants.
giantg2 6y ago
Medicare isn't free. You still have copays for visits, procedures, and medications (deductible and premium costs vary too!). The other point is that you would have to have pretty large generation gaps to have child care while the child is still young if depending on Medicare. Once they're older they generally can stay home alone for a bit. Medicare age is 65. So for example, the grandparent would need to give birth to the parent at age 32.5 and the parent would have to give birth to the child at age 32.5. That would be for the oldest child, so you would be giving birth even later in life for the other children. I believe pregnancy after age 34 is considered to be a geriatric pregnancy. If you take the generational gap the other direction, then you could have great grandparents providing child care if the next generation starts at 22. Higher education and financial stability might be a barrier in this scenario. Then if we are talking about raising the birth rate, how sustainable is this model when families have 3 or more children? Meaning 1 set of grandparents would be responsible for 3 sets of parents assuming this model is used on a wide enough scale to affect the birth rate. This is exasperated is using the great grandparent example.
watwut 6y ago
Some are not that old. If you have child at 22 and your child is 22 when having another kid, you are 44 when being grandparent. Hardly retirement age.

In the US, elderly people have Medicare, so why is this happening?

Forbo 6y ago

I vouched for your comment, because I'm also curious. What healthcare costs is Medicare not covering?

giantg2 6y ago
There are parts A-D. They can vary by part and by state, other factors too. I think you generally pay about $1k-$2k per year in premiums in total for all parts. There are also deductibles and copays. For example, the deductible is about $1500 for hospital stays and copays for doctors visits is 20% of the medicare approved costs. So it's lower than private insurance, but not negligible. It can get pretty expensive if you require lots of procedures or medications, as many people do at that age. Here is an article claiming the average cost for A and B parts is almost $8k per year. https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/02/05/heres-the-average-americans-annual-medicare-bill.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/02/05/heres-the-average...
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  My plan is to beat the game by not playing.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
Medicare pays primarily for emergency hospitalization scenarios (referred to as Part A). Anything that happens outside of a hospital stay (called outpatient services) and medications come from Parts B, C, and D. Coverage for parts B, C, and D is insanely complicated and involves some means testing and who knows what else. There’s private health insurers involved too, and if you can’t afford that, then you can go to the state’s Medicaid, which is also means tested. The whole thing makes you want to kill yourself, which might be the objective.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  And "Medicare for all" is a serious proposal?
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I don’t think people mean copy it in it’s current form, at least not forever. It’s just a catchy name to refer to a program where the government pays for healthcare, even though the current iteration of Medicare is hardly that. The idea is probably to expand the current system to everyone, which is better than nothing, and then work on improving it.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I would image that's the plan, although with different motives. By placing a majority of the people into a broken system, you bring the people's attention to it and force a new system into existence using that public support. If you look at the strategy behind the ACA, it is intended to lay the framework for a replacement by a federal plan/system.
    - seanicus 6y ago
      Hard to get velocity behind improving something half the voting population would rather be rid of, even if it's against the very same voting population's best interest. So it goes in the US.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        Well it makes sense if you have politicians consistently selling you misrepresented ideas like "Medicare for all" or "Defund the police". Of course you will start to lose trust in the system and the officials. I think the bigger issue is how the divide between the parties happens. People seem to demonize the other side based on a specific issue that is important to them and then extrapolate that view to all positions held by the party on the basis that "all [party] politicians are stupid because of their stance on [issue] so their ideas on other issues are stupid too". For a generalized example, the divide is mostly urban vs rural (even in other countries). A major single-issue voting topic would be gun rights vs gun control. A rural person thinks a new gun control law is stupid because the law seeks to ban certain items that statistically don't cause many problems and they find utility in their gun rights (more likely to hunt, slow police response, etc). An urban person would think the new law is good because "why does anyone need that item" and they find little to no utility in those rights (less likely to own a gun, carry a gun, hunt, faster police response, more exposure to the negative news/affects just due to population density). Each side thinks the other is stupid on this subject. People then think, hey the urban person wants to take away my rights on guns on (what appears as) stupid reasoning, so I don't trust their proposal to federalize healthcare because their logic/brain must be deficient. Then urban people will say these dumb hicks "...are clinging to their guns and bibles..." so they must be too stupid to know what's good for them. Which leads to neither side actually listening to the concerns of the other like a community should and instead just trying to gain full control of the government to ram through whatever laws their side wants.

giantg2 6y ago

Medicare isn't free. You still have copays for visits, procedures, and medications (deductible and premium costs vary too!). The other point is that you would have to have pretty large generation gaps to have child care while the child is still young if depending on Medicare. Once they're older they generally can stay home alone for a bit. Medicare age is 65. So for example, the grandparent would need to give birth to the parent at age 32.5 and the parent would have to give birth to the child at age 32.5. That would be for the oldest child, so you would be giving birth even later in life for the other children. I believe pregnancy after age 34 is considered to be a geriatric pregnancy. If you take the generational gap the other direction, then you could have great grandparents providing child care if the next generation starts at 22. Higher education and financial stability might be a barrier in this scenario. Then if we are talking about raising the birth rate, how sustainable is this model when families have 3 or more children? Meaning 1 set of grandparents would be responsible for 3 sets of parents assuming this model is used on a wide enough scale to affect the birth rate. This is exasperated is using the great grandparent example.

watwut 6y ago

Some are not that old. If you have child at 22 and your child is 22 when having another kid, you are 44 when being grandparent. Hardly retirement age.