Tim Miller > Curriculum Vitae > Abstract Page

by Timothy Miller

Official Medicare projections forecast the elderly population to be less healthy and more costly over the next century. This stems from their use of age as an indicator of health status. Increasing in longevity are assumed to increase demand for health care as individuals survive to older and higher use ages. This paper suggests an alternative approach in which time-until-death replaces age as the demographic indicator of health status. Increases in longevity are assumed to postpone the higher Medicare use and costs associated with the final decade of life. The two approaches are contrasted using mortality forecasts consistent with recent projections from the US Censys Bureau and the Social Security Administration. The Time-until-death Method yields significantly lower cost forecasts. However, the hypothetical cost-savings from improved health is small relative to the size of the Medicare solvency problem brought about by population aging.

Paper presented at the 1998 Annual Meetings of the Population Association of America.

• This paper is available in pdf format.