Out-of-Pocket Expenditures on Health Care and Insurance Premiums among the Elderly Population, 2003. Statistical Brief Number 122

摘要

Health care costs continue to rise faster than the overall rate of inflation and are consuming a larger share of family budgets.1 In examining the full impact of rising health care costs on families, it is important to capture out-of-pocket expenditures on premiums as well as out-of-pocket costs for health care treatments. Out-of-pocket premium costs can vary significantly by source of coverage. Furthermore, out-of-pocket premium costs are often related to the generosity of the plan, so that a higher premium means lower out-of-pocket spending on medical care and vice versa. Although expenses for health care are attributable to individuals, expendi-tures for health insurance premiums are attributable to all family members covered by the policy. For this reason, it is important to examine expenses at the family level. This Statistical Brief presents estimates based on data from the Household Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC) on how many elderly individuals (age 65 and over) in the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population lived in families with high levels of health-related spending in 2003. The brief also presents estimates on the percentage of individuals with high family-level out-of-pocket spending, by health insurance status, family type, and poverty status. All differences between estimates discussed in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level.