Everything You Need To Know About Medicare

by Stuart Shapiro

There are few better sources of information on health care policy than the Kaiser Family Foundation.  The chart above is a simple but informative look at Medicare.  This is the information people should know as they hear competing claims about changes in Medicare in the wake of the fiscal cliff.  My two favorite tidbits.

• Medicare spending is growing slower than private insurance on a per-person basis.

• Ten percent of the Medicare population accounts for 57% of Medicare spending (and most of these are people at the end of their lives).

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.