Obamacare Enrollment 2015: How Many People Will Sign Up Next Year? (Public Support for Obamacare Is About to Turn a Corner) Part 1
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, some 10 million previously uninsured adults gained coverage during the open enrollment period that began on October 1, 2013. Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the share of Americans who are “going naked” has plummeted from 21 percent in September of 2013 to 16.3 percent in April of this year.
Even though open enrollment officially ended on March 31, 2014, people are continuing to sign up. Anyone who experiences a major life change (getting divorced, losing a job, having a baby) can still purchase insurance on the Exchanges this summer. Others are dropping out because they landed a job, married someone with insurance, or turned 65.
Earlier this month, Aetna told Investor’s Business Daily “the degree of attrition was “scary” and “unexpected,” and as a result, enrollment is “shrinking.” But enrollment expert Charles Gaba soon put that rumor to rest. Perhaps Aetna is losing customers, but overall, enrollment is holding up. Indeed, ultimately, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that by the end of 2014, 12 million formerly uninsured Americans will be covered either by the Obamacare insurance they purchased on the Exchanges or by newly expanded Medicaid programs.
On November 15, a new open enrollment period begins. Now the big question is this:
Will the ACA Be As Popular In 2015 As It Was In 2014?
Over at the Huffington Post, Jeffrey Young is pessimistic. In a post headlined “Why Obamacare May Have Trouble Signing Up As Many Uninsured Next Year,” he quotes Richard Onizuka, the CEO of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange saying “we got the low-hanging fruit” last year. The people who most needed healthcare signed up right away. These include folks with pre-existing conditions, who had been shut out of the market under pre-Obamacare rules.
By contrast, in this second round of enrollment, Young points out that reformers will be trying to sign up people who are not desperate for insurance, and who may be harder to reach, including: “Hispanics . . . people who have less education, live in remote rural areas . . . don’t have Internet access or don’t consume news.”
Moreover, Young notes: “public opinion about the law itself is negative.” Indeed, nationwide polls show that approval ratings for Obamcare have been sinking in recent months. Reform appears less popular than it was when enrollment began in October of 2013. As a result, Young believes that enrollments will tumble: The CBO now predicts that just 7 million Americans will gain insurance in 2015.
But as I will point out in my next post, there are indications that in states where Obamacare enrollments have been most successful–including Red states – the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may be about to turn a corner, even among Republicans.
This explains why Republican Party leaders who decide how to spend campaign dollars have begun backing away from ads attacking Obamacare. The GOP senses that, going forward, bashing Obamacare will no longer be the best way to bash Obama. Too many people are finding out why reform is a good deal.
Ten Reasons Why Obamacare Will Cover Another 10 Million in 2015
Usually, I agree with Young—his analysis of health care reform is both fact-based and shrewd. But in this case, I’m not persuaded. I can think of at least ten good reasons to expect that another 10 million will either purchase Exchange insurance or join Medicaid’s rolls next year.
– The millions who have already signed up are now telling friends and neighbors about the benefits of Obamacare — including the fact that 87% of them received government subsidies that helped cover premiums. Polls show that while many Americans don’t trust the media’s conflicting reports about Obamacare, they do believe the information they receive from friends and relatives.
– Word-of-mouth will dispel rumors that continue to confuse potential customers. For example, In July a Kaiser Foundation poll revealed that 37% of those polled thought that under the Affordable Care Act, people had no choice of policies. They believed that anyone who bought coverage in an Exchange was shoved into one government-run plan.
– Amazing, when Enroll America conducted a survey in April, just after the first enrollment period ended, it discovered that 26% of those who had not signed up still had not heard that the government was offering financial assistance to low-income and middle-income people who bought coverage in the Exchanges. Those who did enroll were twice as likely to know about the subsidies (56% vs. 26%). In the months ahead, millions will learn more about true cost Obamacare as friends talk about what they are paying for their policies.
– Many will find that premiums are lower than they were in 2013, in part because more insurers will be selling policies on the Exchange, increasing competition. I recently received a letter from my insurer telling me that, next year the premium on my zero-deductible Exchange plan will be falling by 10%. As state regulators make final decisions about which increases they will and won’t approve, I will be writing more about how many insurers are dropping rates.
– In 2015, the Refuseniks will have to pay a fine that rises from 1 percent of yearly household income or $95 per person (whichever is greater) to 2 percent of household income or $325 per person. A family of four earning $70,000 would have to fork over $1,400—and receive nothing in return.Or that same family can sign up for a subsidy, pay part of the premium and wind up with comprehensive insurance that includes free preventive care, and caps out-of-pocket costs.
– This fall, it will be far easier to use the online websites than it was in the fall of 2013. By the end of the first enrollment period, most sites were working smoothly (though by then many would-be customers had given up). This year, there should be many fewer glitches because the administration has persuaded Mikey Dickerson, the Google engineer credited with fixing bottlenecks on the Healthcare.gov website last spring, to become the government’s full-time IT czar.
– The “navigators” charged with helping customers find plans that meet their needs, either in person, or on the phone, will be that much more experienced, and many will have received more training. There will also be more bi-lingual navigators available.
– Over the next year, more states will expand Medicaid. Political pressure is mounting: states that refuse to take the federal dollars that Washington is offering are leaving too much money on the table, and voters are hearing about it. In North Carolina, for instance, local newspapers are reporting that, over the next decade the state risks missing $51 billion in federal payments. Hospitals would get $11.3 billion of that amount. At present, North Carolina hospitals are threatening to lay off workers. If North Carolina expands Medicaid, another 400,000 Americans would be insured under the ACA. And that’s just one state.
– As low-income people who have joined Medicaid talk to their neighbors, more will become aware that the rules for eligibility are changing. We’re likely to see a major impact in the Latino community where language barriers have blocked government efforts to spread the word.
– More young adults will find out that they can sign up for a parent’s employer-based insurance and stay on it until they turn 27. A Deloitte survey of young adults reveals that in April, 45% still had not heard about this Obamacare benefit.
– The Kaiser Foundation’s July poll reveals that most people who actually signed up for Obamacare rate their policies as “excellent” or “good.” This, along with what I know about how the ACA is helping millions, is the major reason why I am convinced that as the newly insured share their experience with others, public support for health care reform will climb—especially among those who most need it.
– As I will explain in part 2 of this post, some affluent Americans who don’t need the ACA or its subsidies (because they already are covered by employers) may be inclined to remain nervous about Obamacare. But Americans who are wealthy enough to feel that they and their adult children are economically secure are a shrinking minority. This is the one good thing that can be said about growing economic inequality.
Originated at Health Beat Blog
Breaking news! People like receiving services when others are footing the bill for them!
@Jay,
Unless they’re on Medicare, most people are paying for their insurance.
So they’re footing the bills themselves.
@Axt
Unless they’re on Medicare, most people are paying for their insurance.
can you reconcile your statement, with Maggie’s statement: including the fact that 87% of them received government subsidies that helped cover premiums.
Breaking news: some Americans like Jay would rather pay double the world cost for health care (or rather, have other Americans pay double) for half the level of care, than risk somebody they disapprove of receive care for free. But then I imagine that Jay has employer coverage, Medicare, or is possibly still on his parents’ policy.
Meanwhile the rest of the developed world looks on with a mix of disbelief and pity. Kiddo, this American exceptionalism is an American disgrace.
Noni
Whew, that used up all my snark for the day…
I wonder what percentage of corporations receive government subsidies that help them increase profits?
I know that somewhere around $300 billion a year in government subsidies go to people with employer provided insurance.
I know that trillions of dollars in government subsidies flowed to US banks in the last 7 years.
All subsidies are not equal in the mindless rantings of the right.
How dare “those people” receive aid from their government.
Jay–
First, do you know who is footing the bill for the subsidies?
All of the funding comes from these sources: income tax increase for folks in the top 2% to 3% (earning $200,000 annually–$250,000 for a couple.)
and fees paid by companies in the health care industry who will benefit from having so many new customers: insurers, drug companies, device companies. They agreed to pay these fees when the ACA was being
forged (though now device makers are whining.)
Secondly, yes people buy insurance in the Exchanges because it is affordable. It is affordable because they receive subsidies.
Finally, see EMichael’s comment and Noni’s comments below.
I would only add that if millions of people remain uninsured we all pay for
their care when they finally get to the hospital (often too late, but that
care is expensive) in the form of higher hospital costs. Also, when they finally turn 65 and qualify for Medicare, they are typically much sicker
than the average Medicare patient, and thus more expensive.
This is an extremely costly and inefficient way to pay for health care for low-income and middle-incomre people. Other countries cover everyone from the outset, and make sure that everyone has free preventive care–thus avoiding costs down the road.
Axt 113–
As EMichael points out, people who have health benefits at work, don’t have to pay taxes on those benefits–and their employers get to deduct
the benefits from their taxes.
Thus people with employer-based insurance are not “footing the bill
themselves.” They are receiving govt. assistance.
In this country, health care is so expensive that virtually everyone needs some form of govt assistance.
M jed-
87% of those who have purchased their own insurance in the Exchanges receive govt. subsidies.
But only a small percent of Americans are buying their own insurance in the Exchanges. The majority either have employer-based insurance, or Medicare or Medicaid
Noni–
I’m afraid you are right.
We are the only country in the developed world that has chosen to turn healthcare into a largely unregulated, for-profit business.
This is why we pay more for everything.
Meanwhile we ration care based on ability to pay.
If that’s “exceptional” . . .
EMichael–
Yes, it is interesting that the right rarely complains about corporate
subsidies, subsidizing the financial world, or subsidies for those who
have employer-based care.
This is because:1) corporations and financial institutions make generous
contributions to conservative politicians 2) People who own stock
in companies and banks benefit from the govt aid, and more
Republicans than Democrats are shareholders and 3)The majority of people who earn more than $70,000 have health benefits at work and many of are Republicans
Low-income people don’t have a lobby that contributes to political
campaigns, and they tend to vote for Democrats.
Meanwhile, conservatives tend to blame them for being poor–ignoring
the fact that in this country, income inequality is baked into the cake:
low wages for everyone except the wealthy combined with tax breaks for the wealthy insure that the rich get richer while the upper-middle class become middle-class, the middle-class become poor and the poor become homeless.
In this country, economic mobility (moving up the ladder) is largely a thing of the past. If you’re born into the lower-middle class, chances are that is where you and your children will stay. At one time we provided generous
scholarships for low-income and middle-income kids so that they could go to college. No longer. Today, many hard-working middle-class families cannot send kids to college.
Maggie,
Thanks for your reply. Related to Jay’s initial post, the widespread popularity of Medicare stems largely from “something for nothing”, i.e., “Medicare beneficiaries on average pay approximately $1 for every $3 in benefits they receive.” http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1307622
As for your last comment, the colleges have become very successful rent-seekers and most forms of subsidies accrue to the institutions (usually administrators). Also, many hard-working middle-class families choose leisure over savings, which is why they cannot send their kids to college:
“Parents participating in the poll had at least one child under the age of 18 who they identified as likely to attend college and household incomes of $50,000 or more.. . .
“The majority of parents surveyed accurately estimated or overestimated current public and private college costs, and many had a good handle on the rate at which these costs are increasing. Yet, among parents planning to contribute to their children’s education, the amount the typical parent plans to save for college is likely to cover 23% of their children’s undergraduate expenses, at best.. . .
“Of those who intend to fund at least some of their children’s higher education, most have spent more money on entertainment and/or discretionary purchases in the past year than they have saved for their children’s college costs. Specifically:
• 58% have spent more on eating out or ordering take-out;
• 49% have spent more on vacations;
• 38% have spent more on consumer electronics.
Thirty-one percent of parents who plan to contribute to their children’s education have put more money toward their children’s allowance in the past year than they have put in their college savings fund.
Almost three-quarters of parents (74%) admit they could be saving significantly more for their children’s education if they limited money spent on traveling, entertainment, electronics and impulse purchases. Two-thirds acknowledge that by reducing their discretionary spending on items such as toys, clothes and entertainment for their children, they would be able to save much more for their college educations.”
http://www.alliancebernstein.com/CmsObjectCDC/PDF/AB_CDC_PRWhycantJohnny.pdf
m.jed:
I believe we have had this discussion before and both Alan Collinge and myself did not agree with your findings and posted counter arguments. How does one put away money for college when the costs of it increased faster than the cost of healthcare in the past and still is doing so? You are correct on the addition of administrators which used to be at a ratio of one per 2-3 instructors and now over run instructors at a reverse ratio. Inflationary college costs due to mismanagement is not the parents fault, is it? Neither is it the parents fault when states have reduced college subsidies from 60 to 20% of cost. EPI did their own study of what it took for a family of 4 to get by in the US which was ~$48,000 annually and it will vary by region.
Before you answer me, please consider this; this is a comments section for a post on the PPACA and it is not a comments section for the Cost of Colleges which I still have a paper mostly done to present.
And while seemingly used interchangeably here, there is a distinct difference between tax breaks and subsidies.
“And while seemingly used interchangeably here, there is a distinct difference between tax breaks and subsidies.”
M.jed:
You are talking to the crowd that believes the government OWNS your labor (read slavery) and (1 – t) is the amount the government lets you keep for your labor, as opposed to the logical assumption that you OWN your labor and the government steals t. Under the left-wing lunatic’s assumption tax breaks are indeed subsidies.
“Breaking news: some Americans like Jay would rather pay double the world cost for health care (or rather, have other Americans pay double) for half the level of care, than risk somebody they disapprove of receive care for free.”
False dichotomy. You can do better than that Noni.
Jay: “False dichotomy.”
I don’t see that false dichotomy. Could you illuminate me with a detailed description of what? false dichotomy and how? it is a false dichotomy?
Mjed–
You wrote: “Medicare beneficiaries on average pay approximately $1 for every $3 in benefits they receive.”
Apparently you think that Medicare is some sort of individual
savings account.
In fact, it is a pool of savings, which helps those how have the
misfortune to live too long and need a great deal of medial care (these tend to be wealthier people who live far longer than the poor),
In this country, the average black male lives to be only 68. After
paying part of his earnings into Medicare for 40 years he gets very little back (The average black male probably started
started working at in his teens and so, even if unemployed for some periods of time, worked for 40 years)
Meanwhile, upper-midde-class white workers (earning, say, $70,000 a year–or more-) — pay more into Medicare, but Iive far longer–and are likely to receive far more expensive care.
They are the folks who win the Medicare lottery
“You are talking to the crowd that believes the government OWNS your labor (read slavery) and (1 – t) is the amount the government lets you keep for your labor, as opposed to the logical assumption that you OWN your labor and the government steals t.”
This wrong in so many ways that it is very painful to read.
a) Assumptions are not logical or illogical. Logic is the process by which one determines that conclusions do (or do not) follow from assumptions. Assumptions themselves can only be tested by empirical observation.
b) Stealing means to take something illegally. Laws only exist in so far as there is some governing authority which enforces them. Unless you can show that the government has some law which says they are not allowed to tax their constituents, which you can’t, equating taxes with stealing is a gross category error.
c) No one that I know believes that a government owns all the money that its constituents make and grudgingly lets them keep some of it. Reasonable people believe that a government provides services (such as enforcing laws against stealing) and requires tax money to fund those services. In the USA, we elect representatives who decide what and how much service to provide, and how much tax money must be collected to pay for them. If we don’t like their decisions we can appeal them to judges and/or elect different representatives.
d) If you assume a government has no right to levy taxes (regardless of democratically-devised law), and that in order for a government to make laws and implement those laws it must have money, then it follows logically that no government should exist, in which case Somalia is the place for you.
These are all simple matters which should have been learned before graduating from high school. My multichotomy is whether the statement was due to gross ignorance, lack of cognitive ability, mental derangement (I have known such cases and they are very tragic), a desire to be annoying, or some combination of these.
Maggie,
Regarding individual savings accounts, I think nothing of the sort; I have a decent understanding of insurance concepts. But in his effort to create individual accounts, by privatizing SS, Bush and his allies trotted out racial arguments similar to the one you made in your last comment, and were roundly criticized by the Left.
Firstly, your data is stale; as of 2010, the average black male lived to 72 vs. 79 for all races/sexes. And Asians and Hispanics live longer than Whites, but I see you omitted other races from your lottery winning conclusion. Also, life expectancy at birth is irrelevant for this topic – life expectancy at age 18 is a much more appropriate metric. Wasn’t able to find that in a quick search, but was able to find that life expectancy at age 65 is about 16 years for black males and 19 years for all sexes, narrowing the gap by 4 years. While I’d guess that the life expectancy gap is wider at age 18 than it is at age 65, I’d also expect the gap at age 18 to more closely resemble age 65 than birth (given the way averages work).
Second, the delta between lifetime benefits and lifetime taxes is higher for low career wage earners than high career wage earners, i.e., Medicare is a highly progressive program (SS, is slightly progressive)
Thirdly, about 25% of Medicare expenditures are made in the last year of life regardless of how old that person is.
Fourthly, the employment to population ratio for White teens at 29% is materially higher than other races, which range from 17-23%.
If people can walk into a car dealership, hand over the money for a base model Camaro and drive away in a fully-loaded Corvette convertible, and then you survey people and ask if they like the program, the answer is of course going to be yes. We should immediately triple Medicare taxes to reflect the true cost of the program and then re-survey to ask if people still support it.
___________________
@run How does one put away money for college when the costs of it increased faster than the cost of healthcare in the past and still is doing so? The answer is in my post – eat less often at restaurants, spend less on vacation, and stop buying so many consumer electronics.
Jed:
What is it you do not understand about high jacking a thread? Your opinion is your opinion; but, this is not the time to air it. You can complain to Dan if you like to. I am politely asking you to cease on this topic.
“…eat less often at restaurants, spend less on vacation, and stop buying so many consumer electronics…”
Translation: become more solvent by providing fewer jobs for waitresses and cooks and resorts and salespeople… yeah, that strategy is working just dandy.
You don’t make a string longer by cutting off one end and tying it to the other end. Saving money by not buying goods and services only works if a few people do it, not if everyone does. Universal pennypinching merely leads to universal impoverishment and economic constipation.
Noni
M jed,
Hijacking is confusing for someone with your profile…send a post on your topic and I probably would guest post it if well written, and you are then welcome to defend it in the thread as well.
You do yourself no favors to your arguments in this one on healthcare.
Sooner or later it always gets down to “but it’s my money!” whenever you talk subsidies with rwdws.
My data on life expectancy is not stale.
When talking about life expectancy, everything turns on when the person was born. A black person born in 2011 can expect to live to about 71.
But when talking about Medicare, we are not talking about 3 -year-olds–we are talking about people who will be 65 in the foreseeable future. (By the time the 3-year-old is on Medicare, it may be a very different program)
The figure I give for life expectancy applies to black men who are now approaching 65 . Most life-expectancy charts show life-expectacy based on
age of birth as well as race and sex.
As for how Medicare dollars are spent–how much is spent in the last year of life is not the important number. What is important is that 76%of Medicare dollars are spent on people suffering from chronic illnesses.
In other words the most expensive patients are not those who are near death, but those who are sick for a very long time.
Alzheimer’s is moving to the top of the list. AT this point in time baby-boomers who live into their late 70s stand a very high chance of being diagnosed with
Alzheimers, and living for another 9 or 10 years–or more–needing full time
care during the second stage of the disease.
People suffering from congestive heart disease also consumer many Medicare dollars
Few blacks or hispanics live long enough to suffer from Alzheimer’s (check the numbers) They are more likely to die at an earlier age.
Affluent white Americans are the people who are most likely to live into their 80s–or 90s–suffering from 3 or 4 chronic diseases–including Alzheimer’s.
They are the ones who “win” the Medicare lottery–if you think that living to
90 (with Alzheimer’s) is “winning” .\
But they do get their money back.
Many people are sensible enough to be content if they live to 75 or so even though they don’t get their money back. They understand that their Medicare taxes are going into a pool that will help people who have misfortune to live longer than most of us.
You don’t seem to understand the concept of “pooling” risk –that is what Medicare, like most insurance, is all about.
Meanwhile, you seem terribly concerned that poor people who don’t earn as much, and so don’t put as much money into the system, are getting something for free.
So I guess you’re hoping to live to 100. . . . I can only say “Be careful of what you wish for.”
M jed-
You try to make an argument that middle-class parents could afford to send their kids to college if they saved more–and didn’t squander so much money on eating out, electronics and vacations.
But you are not talking about the middle-class you are talking about
American earning $50,000 or more.
In other words you are talking about the middle-class (around $60,000, joint income) the upper-middle-cclass and the upper-class.
Take a look at this consumer expenditure survey.
http://www.bls.gov/cex/csxann12.pdf
It is very helpful because it shows how people spend their money, broken down by income.
You will notice that people in the 3rd quint (the middle 20% ) spend
far less on discretionary items like eating out, vacations, alcoholic
beverages, etc. than those in the top quintile.
Those in the middle-quintiles spend most of their money on necessities–shelter, utilities, transportation (including repairing older automobiles),
health insurance, food eaten at home, etc.
Those in the second quintile (working class) have even less $$ to
spend on discretionary items–but in the past, even they had a shot of
saving enough that, together with a scholarship, would allow a child to go to college.
(Since 1980s, those need-based scholarships were replaced with loans for the upper-middle-class. Many upper middle class people would rather
invest their savings in the stock market, hoping for double-digit returns,
while taking a government loan with a low interest rate.
What is interesting is that when you imagine the “middle class” you
think of people who can afford to give their children large allowances,
take expensive vacations, eat out frequently, etc.
You are thinking of an upper-middle class suburban household–no doubt
a family like families that you know.
I wonder how many people you know trying to raise a family on joint
income of , say $55,000.???
Statistically, this is the true middle class—folks who earn something close to median income (Not mean income),
As the consumer expenditure survey shows, after paying for the basics, as couple in that middle quintile has very little money left for savings.
This is why they don’t save. For the middle-class real wages have been flat to down for the past 30 years.
This is why they don’t save.
Well said Maggie.
M jed–
On hi-jacking a post.
I’m bothered when someone takes over a post, not so much because they are off-topic, but because they are spreading misinformation.
Your comments are informed by your prejudices and opinions.
Too often, you neglect facts. (For instance, your idea of how the middle-class spends its money bears little relationship to reality.)
Similarly, you seem to think most of Medicare’s dollars are spent on end-of-life care, and so, since everyone dies, everyone gets the same benefit in that final year.
The truth is that chronic diseases–which, by definition, last for a long
time– eat up most (76%) of Medicare’s dollars. And wealthy people are much more likely to live long enough to suffer from 3 or 4 chronic diseases–including Alzheimers.
But you don’t want to know things that don’t fit into your theory of how the world works.
If a middle class family bought a new $500 TV to replace the one that died, and then saved no money for their kids’ education, that makes m jed’s point technically correct.
And if they have a pizza night once a month,and then saved no money for their kids’ education, that makes m jed’s point technically correct.
And if they spent a Memorial Day weekend at the shore(or beach) or mountains or lake, that makes m jed’s point technically correct.
Of course, his point means absolutely nothing.
Noni–
You write: “You don’t make a string longer by cutting off one end and tying it to the other end. Saving money by not buying goods and services only works if a few people do it, not if everyone does. Universal pennypinching merely leads to universal impoverishment and economic constipation .
Very good point. And I like the string metaphor!
I was away and would expect this comment thread to be relatively dead, but can’t let this one get by:
But when talking about Medicare, we are not talking about 3 -year-olds–we are talking about people who will be 65 in the foreseeable future. (By the time the 3-year-old is on Medicare, it may be a very different program)
The figure I give for life expectancy applies to black men who are now approaching 65 . Most life-expectancy charts show life-expectacy based on age of birth as well as race and sex.
The 68-yr at-birth life expectancy figure for blacks males born in 1950 who are approaching 65 right now is irrelevant. The relevant metric is life expectancy at age 65, which in 1950 was just less than 13 years (and slightly higher for black males than for white males). Black males turning 65 in 2010 had a life expectancy of just under 16 years, meaning expected mortality at age 81, compared to white males who had expected mortality at age 83.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2011/022.pdf
If you believe me to be in error, please provide an alternative citation.
Jed–
I am surprised you find this difficult to understand.( I had been told that you are a well-educated and fairly intelligent person. )
When politicians talk about raising the eligibility age for Medicare,they are talking about raising it for people who are now 56 or 57.
Black men in that cohort can be expected to die within a few years after they turn 65.
When black three-year-olds reach that age, many things may be very, very
different. (Black men now tend to die of heart disease, high blood pressure, and lung cancer. 60 years from now, we may have far better treatments for heart disease and high blood pressure, and the %age of black men who smoke is likely to be far lower. So they may live much longer.On the other hand, Alzheimer’s and the next generation of diseases that kill older Americans may have caught up with them.
We can’t begin to speculate about what raising the Medicare eligibility age would mean in 60 years. We can only talk about what recent proposals would mean
Finally, I notice that you do not even attempt to address my other rebuttals to your comments.
Your thinking seems to be faith-based (i.e. ideologically driven) rather than fact- based. Not what I would expect from someone who claims to be
part of the academic community.
I’m surprised you’re having trouble understanding this, considering you’re a published author on the subject of health. Please go to the CDC link I provided in my last comment. Your comment: Black men in that cohort can be expected to die within a few years after they turn 65 hasn’t been true for at least 60 years unless you’re defining *few* as roughly 13 years.
At the risk of “spreading misinformation” I’m happy to interpret the information at that link for you since you seem to have difficulty comprehending it for yourself, but wait, let’s have Paul Krugman whom I’m fairly confident you would be reluctant to accuse of “spreading misinformation” interpret it for you (from January of 2005):
“It’s true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years – but that doesn’t mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years’ worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks’ low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years – not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.” http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=0
Per Run’s request, I abstain from responding to comments on middle class expenditures, except as it relates to the following, which is a different point – i.e., regarding spreading misinformation – it’s curious you used as an example of my neglect of facts, “(For instance, your idea of how the middle-class spends its money bears little relationship to reality.)” since I cited a survey, which is defined as: “an investigation of the opinions or experience of a group of people, based on a series of questions.” It seems that a survey based on the opinions or experience of people would quite highly resemble reality – since it was *real* people who were answering the questions. eMichael is correct to question the validity/relevance of the survey methodology, but he at a minimum recognizes the information itself is *factual*.
You also said, “Similarly, you seem to think most of Medicare’s dollars are spent on end-of-life care,, when what I said was: about 25% of Medicare expenditures are made in the last year of life regardless of how old that person is.” I’m not sure how they teach English at Yale, but where I’ve been taught, *most* does not equal 25%. You said 76% of Medicare payments were spent on people suffering from chronic diseases. 25%+76% equals roughly 100%.
Ok Jed:
“Per run’s request”, I will not accept your hijacking of a thread because you wish to speak of something else. It was not a request. That might work in academia; but, it is not going to work on the street corner where the common man understands when they are being BSed by a snake-oil-salesman with a slick delivery due to his proffered credentials. Your pontificating lacks merit and again you are pushing the envelope on credibility. In other words, you are full of crap and are making it up.
In 2009, the average life expectancy of black men and women in the United States was just 75. That’s roughly the same as the average life expectancy of white men and women in 1979 — 30 earlier. The average life expectancy of black men in 2009 was just 71 (compared to 76 for white men).
While such a significant gap is troubling, the 2009 black/white life expectancy gap was actually at an all-time low of 4 years. In 1950, that gap was almost twice as large.
It Gets Worst
The CDC report looked only at race, Hispanic origin, and sex, but a 2012 Health Affairs study added level of education to the mix, demonstrating that the 4-year white/black life expectancy gap may hide just how different life can be in what the researchers call “two Americas.” Black Americans may be worse off than white Americans, but Black Americans who have not completed high school lag even further behind.
The researchers found that white men with 16 or more years of schooling can expect to live an average of 14 years longer than black men with fewer than 12 years of education.(For white and black women with the same educational differences, that gap was 10 years.)
The stark differences the researchers uncovered are troubling, but the findings also suggest that — while access to healthcare and other factors are at play — improving educational opportunities may be a key part of making health disparities a thing of the past.
While the racial gap has mostly been on the decline, the CDC explains that the widening gap between 1983 and 1993 (which is clear on the chart above) was likely due to “increases in mortality among the black male population due to HIV infection and homicide” at that time.
What is killing Black Americans?
In a 2013 report, the CDC investigated persistent causes for the racial gap in life expectancy in more detail.
“Higher death rates due to heart disease, cancer, homicide, diabetes, and perinatal conditions” accounted for 60 percent of the gap, the report noted. The report goes on to say that the gap would have been even larger “if not for the lower death rates for the black population for suicide, unintentional injuries, and chronic lower respiratory diseases.”
Below you can see what is disproportionately killing blacks (the dark blue bars) and where their death rates are actually lower than those of whites (the green bars). The gap exists because the higher death rates due to certain causes still outweigh any advantages.
“Death rates for the black population [are] higher than those for the white population for 8 of the 15 leading causes of death,” the CDC has reported.
Black people in the U.S. are likelier to die from heart disease, for example, and white people are more than twice as likely to die from suicide than black people — but heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., and suicide is number 10.
Parts of the Affordable Care Act are designed to address health disparities, and the life expectancy gap is narrowing. But we need to do better – we need to erase it. The Gap Between Black And White Life Expectancy Should Be A National Embarrassment
Gee Jed:
How many Black Americans do you think sat on their asses in a college environment BSing potential students on the potentials of their getting a college education for $25,000+ per year as opposed to standing on an auto assembly line? Do you think you could do it 10 hours a day 6 days a week? What do your hands look like Jed. Are they soft and unscarred? Maggie has it right
ugh. I’ve provided links to my citations. Not making anything up. Quoted Krugman, even. And to clarify, I’m not now and never have been an academic, have never professed to be an academic, nor do I ever aspire to formally associated with any academic community.
run, as Maggie said: “we are talking about people who will be 65 in the foreseeable future. “ and thus *life expectancy at birth is not relevant*!!
Black males who will be 65 in the foreseeable future are expected on average to live to 81. White males who will be 65 in the foreseeable future are expected on average to live to 83.
I agree that your source is relevant but only to the point that it attempts to explain why there’s a racial difference, and marginally supports Maggie’s delineation on cause of death. The CDC data to which I linked, that cuts very simply by conditional age and race, proves that Maggie’s statement that black males approaching Medicare eligibility age are only going to live a few years after age 65 is dead wrong.
as for hijacking – all prior to making my comment (which was in response to an earlier comment, i.e., I didn’t raise the issue) that apparently offended your delicate sensitivities, others had made comments on corporate subsidies, income inequality, economic mobility, tax breaks for the rich, corporate financing of politicians, and finally cost of education (the latter of which was raised first by Maggie). None of these commenters were reprimanded for posting on subjects other than Obamacare’s popularity In a response to Maggie, I addressed two points, one of which was cost of education.
In your reply, you then directed questions at me and in so directing, said that saving for education was difficult because of the rising cost of healthcare – thus demonstrating the relevance of tying the two together (but apparently unable to see such relevance).
On an entirely different previous post, you called me out for not offering a reply to a third person in that comment thread. Oh my what to do? I get scolded for responding to questions and scolded for not responding to questions.
And then there’s this:
“Life Spans Not Falling for Less Educated
They found only negligible changes for white women in this low education group, while longevity actually increased for white men. Life expectancy also rose for black and Hispanic men and women who drop out of high school. . .
“The new study did confirm another finding from the 2012 study – that longevity is rising faster for more educated Americans. But, the authors do “not see any evidence” that people with less education are not living as long as they had in the past.”
http://squaredawayblog.bc.edu/squared-away/life-spans-not-falling-for-less-educated/
which draws on the paper from here:
“While increases in survival to age 85 were similar in magnitude to those experienced by whites, blacks had much larger increases in survival to 65. In 1990, the fraction of adult black men alive at age 25 who would die before reaching 65 was 0.38! By 2010, while still high relative to whites, this fraction had declined to 0.28. For black women, in 1990 0.22 would die before 65. By 2010 this number had dropped to 0.18.”
http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Panel-2_3-Bound-Geronimus-Waidmann-and-Rodriquez.pdf
And for comparison, the % of black males aged 25 or older who have completed college is 84% vs. white males at 88%.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/index.html
and only 32% of white males have college degrees. Thus, the quote from run’s most recent citation: “The researchers found that white men with 16 or more years of schooling can expect to live an average of 14 years longer than black men with fewer than 12 years of education” is specious.
med j.d.
Let me begin my noting that in an earlier comment you claimed that you are not part of academia. But I am told that you are the president of a college or university.
Perhaps you don’t have a Ph.D.–and have never taught students. But as a college president you are sitting on the top of the heap, earning far more than professors.
Your last comment is filled with misinformation.
I think most people know that poorer people don’t live as long as wealthier people. And African-Americans are, by and large, poorer than white Americans. Also most people know that African Americans are less likely to be able to go to and complete college than white Americans. Just look around you (Though perhaps you know very few African-Americans.)
Finally, what I find most disturbing is that a college president would be such a racist. I wish you would come out from behind your pseudonym and tell us who you are.