Childless Elderly Beneficiaries' Use and Costs of Medicare Services: Final Report

This report focuses on findings for the cost analyses that use the 1994 National Long-Term Care Survey as a baseline and 1995-1998 costs as outcomes. Additional findings, using other years, or usage rather than cost outcomes, were generally consistent with these basic findings. Only for 1995 did the authors find that total Medicare costs were lower for parents than for childless individuals. Regarding individual service categories, the majority of statistically significant results indicated that parents have lower Medicare costs than the childless; however, in only one service category — physician visits for providing long-term care services, either at home or in a nursing home — did we find a consistent pattern of significantly lower costs among parents each year. [33 PDF pages]