Trends in medicare spending across strata of resource utilization among older individuals in the United States.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Health care spending is an increasing proportion of government expenditures in most Western countries. How this growth is distributed between individuals with minimal compared to high health care utilization is unknown.

Methods

We examined total and per-capita government expenditure in an observational cohort of fee-for-service U.S. Medicare enrollees aged ≥65 years from 2007 to 2018. We categorized patients into annual resource utilization strata. We examined annualized changes in adjusted spending across resource utilization strata and the distribution of spending within and across strata for a variety of health care settings.

Findings

Examining 314,593,489 beneficiary-years of coverage, the top 1% of beneficiaries accounted for 14.9% of all expenditures,

SUBMITTER: Wallis CJD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8144657 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature