Medicare has enormous Macroeconomic impact because it is a major slice of the federal budget.
It’s important to realize that Medicare does NOT cover long-term care (LTC). Medicare does cover a limited time of nursing home care after release from the hospital for a specific condition if the home environment isn’t adequate. Medicare pays only for skilled nursing care such as rehabilitative services, but most LTC consists of unskilled custodial care. Furthermore, Medicare pays for at most 100 days in a nursing home. But Medicare does not cover the activities of daily living, such as dressing, bathing, eating, etc. which are needed by many sick people and also people with dementia over a period of years. LTC insurance covers these expenses but most people don’t have LTC insurance.
The last year of a person’s life is (on average) the most expensive in terms of medical treatment.
Dying is expensive in America. Healthcare expenditures from all payors (public and private) total $80,000 in the last 12 months of life and $155,000 in the last 3 years.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(22)00176-4/fulltext
A terminally-ill patient has a choice between medical treatment and hospice. A hospice program changes the focus of treatment. Healthcare professionals no longer actively work to resolve a person’s medical condition. Instead, they focus on providing comfort and supportive care to an individual nearing the end of their life. With original Medicare (Part A and Part B), Part A covers the cost of hospice. But it’s more complicated than that because a patient in hospice may need a medical procedure for pain treatment (e.g. surgery to unblock a bowel) which might be unrelated to the fatal medical condition.
The Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997 prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for any health care item or service that causes or assists in causing the death of an individual.
Wendy