Out of pocket spending by Medicare beneficiaries

Health Affairs Publishes Findings From Study Of Out-of-Pocket Spending Among Medicare Beneficiaries

A new study of changes in Medicare beneficiaries’ health care spendingbetween 1997 and 2003 found that median out-of-pocket health spendingincreased from 11.9% of income in 1997 to 15.5% in 2003, and about fourin 10 beneficiaries spent at least one-fifth of their income on healthcare in 2003. The article, “How Much ‘Skin In The Game’ Do MedicareBeneficiaries Have? The Increasing Financial Burden of Health CareSpending, 1997-2003,” was written by Kaiser’s Patricia Neuman, Sc.D.,and Juliette Cubanski, Ph.D.; and Katherine A. Desmond, M.S., andThomas Rice, Ph.D., of the University of California, Los Angeles. Thestudy’s findings were published in the November/December 2007 issue of the journal Health Affairs.

Souce/full:  http://www.kff.org/medicare/med110107oth.cfm