Medicare's New Benefits: Catastrophic Health Insurance

Medicare's new health insurance benefit for catastrophic illness, proposed by the Reagan administration and expanded by a Congress hungry to demonstrate its election-year fealty to the elderly, is under threat.

Abstract

Medicare's new health insurance benefit for catastrophic illness, proposed by the Reagan administration and expanded by a Congress hungry to demonstrate its election-year fealty to the elderly, nevertheless incorporates an important policy that is consistent with the government's budget woes: the elderly will pay for the benefit themselves through larger premiums based mostly on their individual financial circumstances. The expansion also reflects another reality — that the growth of federal spending on health may have moderated during the Reagan presidency, but it still outstripped every other major programmatic area with the exception of interest on the national debt. As a . . .