Date and Time
February 5, 2003
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Although Medicare data show that expenditures decline with increasing age, it is unclear how the US aging population affects the total healthcare cost with long-term care included. We used the Department of Veterans Affairs database (n=1,596,789) to analyze how age and chronic diseases were associated with healthcare cost, particularly how long-term care was used for the oldest old cohort (age 85 and older). We identified 29 common chronic diseases and compared costs of medical care, including long term care and prescription drugs, incurred by the young old (65 to 79 years of age) to the oldest old (80 years and over). We used a hierarchical classification method that grouped patients into 29 mutually exclusive disease groups according to their most expensive chronic disease. We compared effects of disease prevalence and long-term care use on healthcare costs between the two age groups. We found that average total costs of medical care for the oldest old were the same as or higher than the young old in most chronic diseases when including long-term care cost. Long-term care costs accounted for about half of the total cost for many common diseases among the elderly. Furthermore, an increase in long-term care use by the oldest old was not always associated with reduction in cost of other medical care.