The Diagnosis and Treatment of Medicare (Aei Studies on Medicare Reform)

This is a comprehensive analysis of the Medicare program's long-term fiscal challenges. The authors render with clarity and precision just how and why the economic burden of financing the health care of America's senior citizens will mushroom in the decades ahead. They also address the consequences for future generations of taxpayers and beneficiaries of the various generic remedies--bitter medicine all--available to federal policy makers. This book will have a significant, sobering, and positive impact on the Medicare reform debate, and it will certainly be read carefully by policymakers and researchers around the country involved in Medicare reform. The Medicare Problem And Its Potential Solution -- The Current Status And Future Of Today's Medicare -- Paying For Projected Medicare Expenditures: Taxing The Young -- Paying For Projected Medicare Expenditures: Making The Elderly Pay -- Scoring Medicare Reform I: The Medicare Commission -- Scoring Medicare Reform Ii: Fixing Technology At Retirement -- Scoring Medicare Reform Iii: Controlling First-dollar Coverage -- Scoring Medicare Reform Iv: Means-tested Medicare -- What Can Reform Accomplish? The Medicare Reform Scores -- The Fundamentals Of Prepaying Medicare -- Prepaying Reformed Medicare Benefits -- The Transition To Prepaid Retirement Health Insurance -- Medicare And The Social Contract -- Conclusions And Other Issues In The Medicare Reform Debate. Andrew J. Rettenmaier And Thomas R. Saving. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. This book analyzes the long-term fiscal challenge posed by Medicare.