Reports from Retirement Policy.org
Unemployment Statistics on Older Americans (Fact Sheet / Data at a Glance) Richard W. Johnson, Corina Mommaerts The recession has increased joblessness among older Americans. These graphs and tables report unemployment rates and how they have varied by age, sex, race, and education since 2007.
Rising Senior Unemployment and the Need to Work at Older Ages (Research Report) Richard W. Johnson Unemployment rates for older workers reached record levels in 2009, partly because fewer workers eligible for early retirement benefits are dropping out of the labor force. Growing concerns about the adequacy of retirement savings and whether retirees will have enough money to live comfortably in later life appear to have discouraged early retirement. Instead, more older workers are now remaining in the labor force and searching for work after they lose their jobs. The need for older adults to keep working raises the imperative for new policies that help address the special challenges that older job seekers face.
Structuring, Financing and Paying for Effective Chronic Care Coordination (Discussion Papers) Robert A. Berenson, Julianne Howell Growing evidence demonstrates that certain approaches to financing and paying for chronic care coordination for patients are effective not only for improving patient well-being but can also reduce health care spending. However, chronic care approaches should vary for different patient populations and can be carried out effectively by diverse organizations and professionals reflecting the heterogeneity of health care delivery throughout the US. The Report considers the different populations in need of care coordination, summarizes current evidence of effectiveness, describes the various entities that can serve as focal points for coordinating care, and details the possible financing and payment options that can support these approaches.
How Is the Financial Crisis Affecting Retirement Savings? (Fact Sheet / Data at a Glance) Mauricio Soto The stock market lost 56 percent of its value between September 30, 2007, and March 9, 2009. These losses reduced the retirement savings of American households. Recently, however, a good portion of these losses has been reversed. Equities gained 53 percent between March 9, 2009 and August 31, 2009.
Increasing Health Insurance Coverage for High-Cost Older Adults (Research Report) Linda J. Blumberg, Timothy Waidmann Because a small fraction of individuals account for a large share of total health expenditures, insurers gain more by excluding high-cost people from coverage than by efficiently managing the care of enrollees. The incentives for insurers to avoid high-cost and high-risk enrollees affect not only the likelihood of health insurance coverage for the high-risk population, but also the cost and accessibility of coverage overall in the small-group and nongroup private health insurance markets. This paper identifies public policies that might address these problems in private health insurance markets more effectively and delineates the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Are Health Care Costs a Burden for Older Americans? (Policy Briefs/Retirement Project Brief Series) Richard W. Johnson, Corina Mommaerts Although Medicare covers nearly all Americans age 65 and older, premiums, cost shares, and holes in the benefit package raise concerns about seniors' ability to pay for their health care. This brief, based on newly released data, shows that Medicare Part D, introduced in 2006 to cover prescription drugs, helped reduce out-of-pocket costs. The majority of older adults devoted less than one-eighth of their incomes to health care in 2006. However, nearly half of low-income seniors spent more than 20 percent of their 2006 incomes on health care. Medical costs for seniors should figure into the health-reform debate.
National Long-Term Care Insurance: How Much Would It Cost? (Commentary) Howard Gleckman About two-thirds of those over 65 will need some long-term care before they die. Howard Gleckman looks at a key question at the heart of the debate over long-term care insurance: how much will premiums cost?
Revitalizing Social Security: Effectively Targeting Benefit Enhancements for Low Lifetime Earners and the Oldest Old (Testimony) Melissa Favreault I argue that Social Security benefits for long-term, low-wage workers are modest and need to be increased. There are many ways to bolster benefits for low-income retirees, each with strengths and weaknesses, so technical details of each proposal will determine its effectiveness. Any Social Security reform package will include multiple provisions that interact with one another. Certain provisions to help low-earners may be more or less desirable depending on a package's other components. Finally, some low-income older and disabled Americans are beyond Social Security's reach. To help them, Congress should consider expanding the Supplemental Security Income program.
How Will the Stock Market Collapse Affect Retirement Incomes? (Series/Older Americans' Economic Security) Barbara Butrica, Karen E. Smith, Eric Toder Urban Institute projections suggest the stock market collapse will have small effects on most Americans' retirement incomes. It's estimated that 37 percent of Americans born between 1941 and 1965 owned no stocks when the market crashed in 2008 and that income from assets will account for a small share of retirement income, even for those with stocks. For most retirees, Social Security provides the majority of income. Had Social Security been invested in private accounts with equities, the impact of the crash would have been much larger—positive or negative, depending on one's birth cohort and on future market performance.
Do We Need a Value-Added Tax to Solve Our Long-Run Budget Problems? (Occasional Paper) Rudolph G. Penner The U.S. budget is on an unsustainable path. That is because Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which together constituted almost one half of noninterest spending before the recent stimulus plan, are all growing faster than tax revenues. If these programs are not reformed, tax burdens raised, or other spending decimated, deficits and the national debt will explode. It is difficult to imagine solving the entire budget problem by slowing spending growth, because benefits would then be far below those previously promised. It is equally unlikely that tax increases could solve the whole problem because the tax burden would then be so far above any ever experienced by Americans. To the extent that tax burdens are to be increased, there are three options. Tax rates could be raised in the existing system, but that would be extremely inefficient. Tax reform might raise revenues more efficiently, but that is excruciatingly difficult politically. That leaves the possibility of a brand new tax and a VAT is a very likely candidate.
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