“The authors of the new paper don’t break catastrophic risk down by income level, but they note that Medicare enrollees in the top 5% in terms of out-of-pocket spending probably spent an average of $19,009 out of pocket in 2016. . . . In 2016, high-income Medicare enrollees spent an average of $564 on dental care, $820 on audiologists and other providers not paid by Medicare, and $913 on prescription drug co-payments and coinsurance bills. . . . The new out-of-pocket spending analysis shows that, for the 2016 Medicare enrollees in the top 5% in terms of out-of-pocketing spending, long-term care spending of all kinds accounted for more than $13,400 of the $19,009 in average out-of-pocket spending.”

LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):
It is unusual, but welcome, to see analysts focus on upper-income Medicare beneficiaries instead of claiming all older people are poor and desperately in need of more government largesse. Next they should analyze how easily upper-income Medicare beneficiaries qualify for Medicaid LTC benefits as we did in “LTC Bullet: Hoist with its Own Petard,” Friday, April 28, 2017.

5 New Facts About Retirees’ Real Health Care Bills

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