Tuesday, May 11, 2010

New paper: “Does Staying Healthy Reduce Your Lifetime Health Care Costs?”

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has released a new Issue in Brief: "Does Staying Healthy Reduce Your Lifetime Health Care Costs?" by Wei Sun, Anthony Webb, and Natalia Zhivan.

The brief's key findings are:

  • Retirees in good health face higher lifetime health care costs than those in poor health.
    • A typical healthy couple at age 65 can expect to spend $260,000 with a 5-percent risk of exceeding $570,000.
    • A typical unhealthy couple can expect to spend $220,000 with a 5-percent risk of exceeding $465,000.
  • Those in good health live longer, eventually become less healthy, and often need nursing home care.
  • So the healthy who delay buying Medigap or long-term care insurance could face much higher premiums later.

This brief is available here.

Bloggers note: This is why health care reform is so complicated – even being healthy causes your health care costs to rise.

Posted by Andrew G. Biggs at 3:57 PM

1 comment:

Arne said...

I get that chronic illness (at65)increases the chance of dying before needing nursing care, and that needing nursing care increases lifetime expenses. I could not tell whether needing nursing care at the end of a healthy life increased average annual expense.

5/12/10, 3:32 PM

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