Medicare Benefits for the Elderly:

Medicare Benefits for the Elderly: Impacts of Benefit on a Younger Population The health cares system was, until the last few decades, managed by a fee for system (FSS) i.e. people paid for services. Comparatively recently, this has changed to one that is a managed care system although the brunt of it is still fee-for-service.

Problems with the FFS are numerous including the fact that there is discrimination in health delivery with great swaths of the population receiving inadequate or utter lack of care and with health services being questionable and of limited value. Costs are held down by three kinds of services: Health Management Organizations (HMOS), Independent Practice Associations (IPA), and Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO). One of the publicly funded programs that partially reduce cost of health insurance is Medicare that is slanted to the elderly (65 years and older).

Because Medicare not only has gaps in coverage, but also demonstrates spiraling costs, observers have noted that it is the wealthy elderly rather than the poor younger individuals who mostly benefit from Medicare support. Further research shows that disproportionate attention is paid to certain sectors of the population (for instance, the elderly may receive more attention than maternity), and to that extent Medicare, whilst benefiting the elderly, simultaneously negatively impacts a younger, just as needy, population.

Until now, observers have used average income to measure a person's economic status and have argued that Medicare benefits flow to the rich elderly rather than to the poor. Bhattacharya and Lakdawalla (2006). argue the reverse saying that economic statue fluctuates and is idiosyncratic, therefore, relying on educational attainment as a more accurate measure for evaluating and demarcating the difference between 'advantaged' and 'disadvantaged' population.

Using various algorithms, they estimated that college students, and particularly young individuals, receive less Medicare benefits than do the elderly, more impoverished individuals who did not attend college or were high-school dropouts. This is so, even though some young individuals, attending college or higher education, cannot afford (or can barley afford) their own insurance. Yet, the fact that one receives an education automatically implies that the individual is wealthier than one who cannot afford college and, therefore, the latter received Medicare whilst the former is exempt.

Whilst McClellan and Skinner (1997; cited by Bhattacharya and Lakdawalla (2006)) found that financial returns of Medicare are much higher for advantaged groups both in absolute and in aggregate terms, as an accumulated percentage of their life's income, Bhattacharya and Lakdawalla (2006) argued that the more uneducated the individual, the greater the amount of Medicare benefits that he or she received. High-school dropouts, consequently, receive a higher gradient of Medicare benefits than do college graduates.

Since possibility of receiving Medicare is assessed by measures of a certain economic input -- that the author's show is related to education - consequently, it is the younger, rather than the elderly population, who yield the brunt of the burden of Medicare. And much of these younger individuals who are covering the burden are struggling to pay for their college education are abetted by parents who are giving their all to ensure that their children attend a decent school college, or university.

Furthermore, Medicare institutes that it is the elderly poor in America, 65 years and older who can receive her aid. Yet, the working class poor elderly person (officially defined as such by the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics (2011) who, despite working 27 weeks or more -- tedious heard labor- and around the clock still show income that are at, or below, the official poverty threshold) in particular have the most difficult situation since they do not reach Poverty Guidelines that are defined by the U.S.

Department of Health and Human services (HHS) for classifying poor individuals and for determining federal program eligibility (U.S. Department of Health and Human services, 2011), but, on the other hand, they are too poor to afford that insurance. These individuals may not qualify for assistance.

In other words, it is the very elderly who are no longer able to work who receive Medicare, whilst those who may need it as much, or even more, (since they lack the resources), are by a crippled definition of poor, delimited from receiving that aid. Most of all, since Medicare drives itself to benefiting the elderly the younger population have the increasingly steep burden of compensating for health care cost and lost income, as well as housing needs that will support this larger and growing population of elderly individuals.

This is particularly so since the cost of insurance keeps mounting with new technology and prescription drugs as well as labor costs increasing it. Fewer elderly are barely able to afford Medicare. It is the younger population who is expected to fund the money as tax returns particularly so since Medicare does little to hold down the costs.

The problems of access to Medicare with certain swathes of the population (due to living in remote areas, being illiterate, or for other reasons) being less able to receive their needed insurance than other has also recently sparked calls for reform to modify these situations. This will likewise transfer the burden to a younger population. Similarly will be endeavors to improve quality of health.