Who Should Pay for Medicare?
184 pages
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6 x 9
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© 2004
Good news first? The good news is that Americans today are living longer, in part because of continual advances in healthcare. But the bad news is that with our aging population larger than ever before, nothing is being done to ensure that we can continue to afford the increasing costs of care. How Medicare—with the Bush administration's reforms and a slumping economy—will meet the needs of its recipients without adequate financing is among the most pressing issues facing this country today.
Daniel N. Shaviro sees the future of our national healthcare system as hinging on the issue of funding. The author of books on the economic issues surrounding Social Security and budget deficits, Shaviro is a skilled guide for anyone seeking to understand the financial aspects of government programs. Who Should Pay for Medicare? offers an accessible overview of how Medicare operates as a fiscal system. Discussions of Medicare reform often focus on the expansion of program treatment choices but not on the question of who should pay for Medicare's services. Shaviro's book addresses this critical issue, examining the underanalyzed dynamics of the significant funding gap facing Medicare. He gives a balanced, nonpartisan evaluation of various reform alternatives—considering everything from the creation of new benefits in this fiscal crunch to tax cuts to the demographic pressures we face and the issues this will raise when future generations have to pay for the care of today's seniors.
Who Should Pay for Medicare? speaks to seniors who feel entitled to expanded coverage, younger people who wonder what to expect from the government when they retire, and Washington policy makers who need an indispensable guidebook to Medicare's future.
Daniel N. Shaviro sees the future of our national healthcare system as hinging on the issue of funding. The author of books on the economic issues surrounding Social Security and budget deficits, Shaviro is a skilled guide for anyone seeking to understand the financial aspects of government programs. Who Should Pay for Medicare? offers an accessible overview of how Medicare operates as a fiscal system. Discussions of Medicare reform often focus on the expansion of program treatment choices but not on the question of who should pay for Medicare's services. Shaviro's book addresses this critical issue, examining the underanalyzed dynamics of the significant funding gap facing Medicare. He gives a balanced, nonpartisan evaluation of various reform alternatives—considering everything from the creation of new benefits in this fiscal crunch to tax cuts to the demographic pressures we face and the issues this will raise when future generations have to pay for the care of today's seniors.
Who Should Pay for Medicare? speaks to seniors who feel entitled to expanded coverage, younger people who wonder what to expect from the government when they retire, and Washington policy makers who need an indispensable guidebook to Medicare's future.
"Dan Shaviro is that rare scholar who can blend legal and economic thinking in designing social reform. In this masterpiece of logic, he takes us outside the narrow debate over what we get and asks the fundamental question of who should pay for it. Only with approaches like Shaviro's are we ever going to face up to the types of Medicare-and broader health care-reforms that sooner or later we must undertake."—Eugene Steurle, Urban Institute
"Refreshing and unique. Daniel Shaviro's new book comes at a particularly welcome time. [It] provides insight into how the program should be financed. . . . Free of economic jargon, he uses lively analogies to simplify complicated financing issues. . . . The reader will benefit from his fresh and entertaining perspective on the Medicare predicament."— Dana Goldman, New England Journal of Medicine
"Sprightly, opinionated, and entertaining. This book attempts, with considerable success, to explain what the questions and issues are, both for overall efficiency and for the distribution of the burden of paying for the program. Shaviro is especially strong in his ability to capture in a few sentences what takes most policy analysts paragraphs of turgid prose."—Mark Pauly, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Medicare Today: Key Features of the Current System
3. Medicare's Incentive and Distributional Effects
4. A Five-Part Conceptual Decomposition of Medicare
5. Medicare's Social Insurance and Risk Prevention Purposes
6. Medicare's Long-Term Fiscal Gap and Its Underlying Causes
7. Significance of Medicare's Long-Term Fiscal Gap
8. Paying for Medicare I: Benefits
9. Paying for Medicare II: Enrollee Contributions
10. Paying for Medicare III: Other Financing to Narrow the Fiscal Gap
11. Conclusions and Predictions
Notes
References
Index
1. Introduction
2. Medicare Today: Key Features of the Current System
3. Medicare's Incentive and Distributional Effects
4. A Five-Part Conceptual Decomposition of Medicare
5. Medicare's Social Insurance and Risk Prevention Purposes
6. Medicare's Long-Term Fiscal Gap and Its Underlying Causes
7. Significance of Medicare's Long-Term Fiscal Gap
8. Paying for Medicare I: Benefits
9. Paying for Medicare II: Enrollee Contributions
10. Paying for Medicare III: Other Financing to Narrow the Fiscal Gap
11. Conclusions and Predictions
Notes
References
Index
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Economics and Business: Health Economics
Political Science: Public Policy
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