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Population Ageing and Health Care Expenditure: Is Long-term Care Different?
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Felder, Stefan Zweifel, Peter Werblow, Andreas |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | In the debate over ever increasing health care costs, a routine argument states that ageing of the population is a crucial driver of health care expenditure (HCE). Z, F and M (1999) argued that this claim is a red herring. Their dissent was based on the analysis of health care expenditure of deceased persons in their last years of life. The number of quarters remaining until death was significant while the age of the persons was not. In a recent paper (Z, F and W, 2004) we replicated our results using a larger data set, including HCE of survivors, and taking into account methodological concerns raised by S and R (2001) and D and N (2002). In particular, we no longer focused on the time path to death of HCE, which involves a whole host of time dummies each of which is potentially endogenous since HCE may contribute to survival. Instead, we related individual HCE of a given year to remaining time to death, which was on average 21 months for the sample of decedents. Additionally, we extended the sample to include surviving individuals, since a concern has always been that the effect of age on HCE may be different for survivors. This paper deals with yet another concern, viz. the generality of the red herring argument. Up to present, testing has been confined to total HCE, and the question arises as to whether the red herring applies equally to acute and longterm care (LTC). Chronic illnesses are prevalent in old age and often lead to permanent stays in nursing homes. Since nursing home care is expensive, it largely contributes to HCE in old age and may be responsible for the findings reported in the literature. S and L (2000) did analyze HCE of the U.S. Medicare population, i.e. individuals aged 65+. They report a convex (from below) age profile for both nursing home care and (less accentuated) for home |
| Starting Page | 43 |
| Ending Page | 48 |
| Page Count | 6 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 142 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.sjes.ch/papers/2006-V-7.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
