How Much Does Health Spending Eat Away at Retirement Income?

The brief’s key findings are:

• Even with Medicare coverage and ignoring long term care, retirees face sizable out-of-pocket costs for premiums, copays, and uncovered services.
• One way to gauge this burden is to look at how much these medical costs eat into their Social Security benefits and other income.
• After subtracting these costs, the typical retiree has only 75 percent of Social Security and 88 percent of total income left.
• If health care costs continue to increase faster than incomes, these percentages will drop further.