Boomer Medicare

Booming Medicare When Medicare was introduced in 1965, woman 65 had, on average, 18 more years of life, men, 13.5. Today, those numbers are 21 and 19 respectively. In 1980, Medicare consumed 5% of federal spending; now it’s 13.5%. Raising the Medicare age to 67 cuts Medicare spending by $148 billion, it trims government spending…

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Doctor Doctor, Gimmie the News

In the mid-2000s, American made roughly 160 million doctor visits/year. Since ’09, that number has fallen to 140 million, and has stayed there. Thus, real US per-capita spending on healthcare has been growing at just 2.1%/year, down from 4.3%/year earlier in the decade. Why? It’s a combination of a lousy economy, higher out-of-pocket expenses, a…

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