1. See, for example, K. Hammonds , “Medicare Gets an Umbrella for an Avalanche,” Business Week (2 June 1997 ): 44 ; and
2. This also includes spending growth in the mid-1970s when people with disabilities were added to Medicare. Payments to such persons averaged 25 percent above those to the aged in 1975, and for the period 1974–1976 per enrollee reimbursement for the aged rose about 40 percent but 55 percent for the disabled, as calculated from data published in B. Hirsch, H. Silverman, and A. Dobson, “Medicare Summary: Use and Reimbursement by Person, 1976–1978,” Health Care Financing Program Statistics (Baltimore: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, August 1982 ), 1 –30.
3. If these two benefits were truly postacute care services and hence served as substitutions for hospital care, it might still be important to include them with other acute care coverage. But much of the growth of these benefits in the early 1990s reflected an expansion of Medicare home health into long-term care types of services. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, “Home Health Utilization,” in Report to the Congress: Context for a Changing Medicare Program (Washington: MedPAC, June 1998 ), 107 –113.
4. K. Levit et al. “Inflation Spurs Health Spending in 2000,” Health Affairs (Jan/Feb 2002 ): 172 –181.