McKnight's February 23, 2024
Most federal officials and the analysts who advise them are progressives. They prefer public over private sector solutions for most social problems. Sometimes progressives bend the truth to tip public opinion in their favor. That happens with Medicaid, Medicare and long-term care for the elderly.
Government programs, especially Medicaid (42.8%) and Medicare (17.2%), dominate LTC spending. Most of the remainder comes from private insurance (8.9%) and other public programs (19.0%). Curiously, out-of-pocket LTC expenditures are only 12.5%.
I say “curiously,” because conventional wisdom holds that aging Americans in large numbers expend their life’s savings on LTC, ending up on Medicaid after they spend down into impoverishment. If that’s true, wouldn’t out-of-pocket costs (OOPs) be higher than one-eighth?
In fact, the...
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