Medical Xpress October 30, 2024
Many Medicare beneficiaries are at risk for financial hardship from the costs of a single hospital stay, according to a study published online Oct. 29 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Paula Chatterjee, M.D., M.P.H., from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and colleagues identified beneficiaries who would face financial precarity if exposed to the Medicare Part A hospital deductible ($1,600) in a cross-sectional study of the 2018 wave of the Health and Retirement Study.
Estimates of financial precarity, defined as having insufficient funds to pay the deductible, were examined across four scenarios.
The researchers found that 45.0 percent of the 4,881 beneficiaries had insufficient funds in checking and savings accounts to pay the Medicare hospital deductible.
The...
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