Medicaid and the Elderly

The brief’s key findings are:

• Medicaid covers not only the low-income elderly but also those with higher incomes who become impoverished by health costs, such as nursing home care.
• The percentage of high-income single retirees receiving Medicaid rises with age – from near zero for those in their 70s to 20 percent for those in their late 90s.
• Even higher-income retirees who never receive Medicaid benefit from the insurance value that it provides, which allows them to maintain smaller reserves.
• The analysis suggests that single retirees of all incomes value current Medicaid benefits at more than their cost but an expansion at less than its cost.