Saving for Health Care in Retirement
Medicare covers only about 60% of the cost of health care during retirement. Seniors often underestimate the amount that they are responsible for. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, men need to have saved $68,000 to $178,000; while women need anywhere from $98,000 to $242,000 in retirement savings dedicated to health care. Even with these large amounts, men and women still have only a 50% chance of having sufficient funds for medical care during retirement.
Obviously, seniors are very dependent on government.
Agree with Ken. It’s about 70% government: 30% provate. No wonder seniors support the welfare state.
If you are a senior and you think this is a good thing, see the above post.
This is another example how health care spending is on course to crowd out other areas of consumption. Even though Medicare pays 60% of retirees’ medical bills, women still need up to $242,000 just to cover retiree health costS. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests women will consume $400,000 on health care after retirement. This is a significant amount. Over time per capita lifetime medical consumption will begin to exceed the cost of housing, transportation and food.
With the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), senior citizens of the nation are left with a double-edged sword with some seniors losing their Medicare benefits and others would gain from changes to the Medicare’s prescription-drug program. Under the PPACA, government payments to the Medicare Advantage plan would be cut over the next 10 years. The extra benefits offered by these plans could be dropped gradually due to budget constraints. Enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans would reduce resulting in increased load on the traditional Medicare services. Medicare would also experience increased demands of their services especially with the retirement of millions of baby boomers beginning in the near future. This would severely affect the access to quality health care and the nation would face a shortage of care providers in the coming years.
The good news is that the government has initiated steps to reduce the ‘dough nut’ hole problem faced by the seniors with respect to their prescription drug benefits and the bill has set up an Independent Payment Advisory Board, that would review the process and submit legislative proposals in 2013.
The seniors currently left with fewer choices with respect to their health care and long-term support services and a very uncertain future.
jobs jobs jobs jobs. They knew it was what people watned to hear. So far we have six or more abortion bills, and attempt to use the 2010 budget to cut women’s health care and much much more, and now this house bill, voted for by Republicans, ending the only program that guarantees people will not be denied medical care when they are dying even if they run out of money of their own. There is 1 jobs bill, it was introduced by house Democrats.