Tag: "life expectancy"

Will Longer Life Expectancy Bankrupt Medicare?

Health Care Expenditures in the Last Two Years of Life

Health Care Expenditures in the Last Two Years of Life

As this graph shows, the total cost of nursing home care during a person’s last two years is extremely sensitive to that person’s longevity and rises steadily as that persons attained age increases. But the cost of that patient to Medicare during those final two years actually decreases. As the article concluded, “longevity after the age of 65 has a larger effect on the costs of nursing home care […] than on the costs of services covered by Medicare.” Thus, the increasing number of persons eligible for Medicare in the future will certainly increase that program’s costs, but their increasing longevity is itself a benign factor. Or as Harvard economist David Cutler concluded, “longer life in itself will not add to Medicare costs.”

Richard Kaplan at the Health Care Blog.

May 24, 2013 | 15 comments | by

Immigrants Are Healthier until They Stay Here a While

As early as the 1970s, researchers found that immigrants lived several years longer than American-born whites even though they tended to have less education and lower income, factors usually associated with worse health. That gap has grown since 1980…Evidence is mounting that the second generation does worse. Exploratory estimates based on data from 2007 to 2009…show that Hispanic immigrants live 2.9 years longer than American-born Hispanics.

[One study] found that immigrants had at least a 20 percent lower overall cancer mortality rate than their American-born counterparts.

Mortality rates from heart disease were about 16 percent lower, for kidney disease 18 percent lower, and for liver cirrhosis 24 percent lower.

This is from The NYT.

May 20, 2013 | 12 comments | by

What Causes Longer Life Expectancy?

“The best childhood personality predictor of longevity was conscientiousness — the qualities of a prudent, persistent, well-organized person,” according to the two professors…

“It was not cheerfulness and it was not having a sociable personality that predicted long life across the many ensuing decades,” she and Friedman wrote in their book. “Certain other factors were also relevant, but the prudent, dependable children lived the longest. The strength of this finding was unexpected, but it proved to be a very important and enduring one.”

Book, book review, and article on the book. HT: Arnold Kling.

Apr 25, 2013 | 14 comments | by

Are Health Outcomes Becoming More Equal?

The haves are those who enjoy great health into their 90s. The have-nots are those who suffer from serious health problems and do not live to see adulthood. As we pointed out in a recent study, among those Americans who were born in 1975, the unluckiest 1 percent died in infancy, while the luckiest 1 percent can expect to live to age 105 or longer. Now let’s fast forward to those born in 2012. The bottom percentile of this cohort can expect to survive until age 18. At the other end of the spectrum, the luckiest 1 percent can expect to live to age 108. That’s a much bigger gain in life expectancy among the have-nots than among the haves. Of course, life expectancy is but one measure of health and well-being, but understanding these trends offers a more complete picture than considering income alone.

The American. HT: Tyler Cowen.

Mar 26, 2013 | 10 comments | by

Working Longer

An increase in the average retirement age from 64 to 68 would save about 20 percent in social security payments since the average number of years in retirement would be cut by about 20%. Similarly, an increase in retirement age to 70 would save about 25 percent in social security retirement benefits. Either change would also add significantly to revenue from social security taxes since workers would be employed for several additional years. Therefore, such increases in age of eligibility for social security benefits would go a long way toward solving the looming social security financial “crisis.”

More on this issue in The Becker-Posner Blog.

Mar 14, 2013 | 11 comments | by

Gene Steuerle: Raising the Retirement Age is a Progressive Reform

On the front page of the Washington Post on March 11, 2013, Michael Fletcher connects different the life expectancies of the poor and rich to the debate over whether Social Security should provide more years of retirement support as people live longer. He mistakenly leaves the impression that adjusting the retirement age for increases in life expectancy hurts the poor the most. In fact, such adjustments take more away from the rich. Let me explain how.

Source: The Government We Deserve blog.

Mar 13, 2013 | 12 comments | by

Research Results I Wish I Hadn’t Seen

  • Female mortality rates increased in 42.8 percent of counties in the United States during 1992–2006.
  • The average physician will lose $43,743 over five years after adopting electronic health records.
  • Cost savings from workplace wellness incentives reflect cost shifting to unhealthy workers.

More on these issues in the Health Affairs blog.

Mar 07, 2013 | 9 comments | by

Increased Life Expectancy, and Other Links

Primitive hunter gatherers, at age 30, had the same odds of dying as a modern Swedish or Japanese man would face at 72.

Malpractice in the UK: The National Health Service normally pays out around £20,000 if the wrong testicle has been removed.

Poll: ObamaCare’s biggest beneficiaries are skeptical of ObamaCare.

Do health care providers lose money on Medicare patients? No.

Mar 05, 2013 | 11 comments | by

The Cost Effectiveness of New Drugs

Between 1996 and 2003, the mean vintage of prescription drugs increased by 6.6 years. This is estimated to have increased life expectancy of elderly Americans by 0.41-0.47 years. This suggests that not less than two-thirds of the 0.6-year increase in the life expectancy of elderly Americans during 1996-2003 was due to the increase in drug vintage. The 1996-2003 increase in drug vintage is also estimated to have increased annual drug expenditure per elderly American by $207, and annual total medical expenditure per elderly American by $218. This implies that the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (cost per life-year gained) of pharmaceutical innovation was about $12,900.

NBER working Paper by Frank R. Lichtenberg.

Dec 13, 2012 | 9 comments | by

Stopping Smoking Doesn’t Reduce Health Care Spending

But the increased spending is offset by productivity gains:

[W]e estimated that cessation accompanied by weight gain would increase average life expectancy by 3.7 years, and that the average lifetime reduction in medical expenditures from improved health ($5,600) would be offset by additional expenditures resulting from prolonged life ($7,300)…

Avoidance of weight gain after quitting smoking would increase average life expectancy by four additional months and reduce mean extra spending resulting from prolonged life by $700. Overall, the average net lifetime health care cost…would be…more than offset by even one year’s worth of productivity gains.

Health Affairs study. Aaron Carroll comments.

Dec 11, 2012 | 9 comments | by
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